DDOS attack?

Hi,
Thanks so much for any input. About 24 hours ago with No notice my web host suspended my account which shut down my website and message boards as they said there was a DDOS attack on my domain. I was hoping someone could tell me how this could have happen? They suggest I need to change the password to my account with them to keep it more secure. I already had a very difficult password so I'm certain No one would have guessed it. I'm still waiting for them to reset my site it was supposed to be back up last night but still no site today. So need to figure out what happen and away to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Jill

 

A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack really doesn't have anything to do with someone knowing your account password. In the case of a DDoS, what usually happens is that there are so many client computers (typically a botnet) attempting a connection to your site that the server can't keep up and it crashes. As far as what you can do about it (assuming it was truly a DDoS)--probably very little. Additionally, if you have more legitimate traffic to your site than what your server can handle or your hosting service has allowed you, then the site will most likely also go down or the service provider may the refuse traffic to your site in order to prevent their services from being affected. Unless you own the server(s) where your site is hosted, there's probably very little that *you* can do and you'll be at the mercy of your service provider. If this was a DDoS, it seems strange that your provider would ask you to change the password to your account, unless they see evidence that someone is trying to crack your account. Are you sure that the request to change your password is truly from your service provider and not a social engineering attempt?--especially if someone is already trying to DoS your site.

 

Hi Tim,
Thank you for your reply. The saga of what ended up happing after my host said I had a DDOS at tact still has my head spinning. The first day they told me all I had to do was change my passwords and within about 20 moments they would put my site up. As hours passed I called them and I was told the same story for 2 days. After the two days passed and still no board I called them yet again and at this time they said they were suspending my account as they could NO longer run my site on their host as if the DDOS happen once it will happen again if I stay on their server. I had been with them for about 10 years so was shocked along with that message they locked me out of my control panel so I could not get a back up of my squl database file for my message board to move to a new host. I found a new host and had my domain transferred and then after calling them each day for over a week they said one of their high level techs was able to restore the a sql copy of my database and I would be able to access it with an FTP. When they said restore I began to wonder if something didn't happen to their server and they had lost my site and decided to put the blame on me to take it off of them. I guess I will never know what really happen but I made numerous attempts to upload/restore the sql file with my new host and it was filled with syntax errors so I gave up and so I lost years of post and members but I am now starting over with a new board and hope that in time I can rebuild.

Jill