I didn’t think there would be a time when I would hate horses or lions. Well... hate is an awful strong word, so let me rephrase, “I strongly dislike horses and lions at this time.”

What I am talking about is the Recaptcha program we had to put on CompetitionPlus.com, forcing you to identify these animals following the severe DDoS attacks we experienced two weeks ago. Now what I will say I hate are individuals who attack one’s livelihood with no regard for what happens to us. For 23 years we've had to work our fingers to the bone to deliver a reputable news agency.

So what is a DDoS attack?

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.

DDoS attacks achieve effectiveness by utilizing multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic. Exploited machines can include computers and other networked resources such as IoT devices.
From a high level, a DDoS attack is like an unexpected traffic jam clogging up the highway, preventing regular traffic from arriving at its destination.

DDoS attacks are carried out with networks of Internet-connected machines.

These networks consist of computers and other devices (such as IoT devices)which have been infected with malware, allowing them to be controlled remotely by an attacker. These individual devices are referred to as bots (or zombies), and a group of bots is called a botnet.
Once a botnet has been established, the attacker is able to direct an attack by sending remote instructions to each bot.

When a victim’s server or network is targeted by the botnet, each bot sends requests to the target’s IP address, potentially causing the server or network to become overwhelmed, resulting in a denial-of-service to normal traffic.

Because each bot is a legitimate Internet device, separating the attack traffic from normal traffic can be difficult.

So this is where the extra security comes in at this moment on CompetitionPlus.com. We must do this to separate the legit drag racing fans and readers from Chinese-originated attacks. 

Until we launch our redesigned website in the upcoming weeks, we must take this extremely inconvenient extra level of protection. It’s a pain in the butt, but guess what is even worse? These bots (350K attacks in 72 hours) were taking down the site and causing us thousands of dollars in repair costs to the servers. That takes away from the money we can use to travel and cover the sport at the level we are accustomed to. 

Please be patient with us as we work through this headache, all the while bringing you the best news you can trust on the Internet.