Massive brute force hack attack on Able on us has just been contained ...
 

Dear Eratosphereans,

You might have noticed that the site was very slow today. I did! I went in to investigate the server logs and processes, and discovered there was a massive brute force attack on the Able Muse/Eratosphere server from some malevolent hacker(s). Fighting them off took me almost the whole day--from wake-up until now, eventide! And, of course, I couldn't attend to anything else (such as, especially, respond to all the kindness of those of you who chose to heed my, rather intrusive recent note, and sponsor Able Muse/Eratosphere).

Who are these despicable hacker elements? I wish I could pinpoint them precisely, but the logs and the festering malevolent processes they were spawning on the server in an attempt to wreak catastrophic damage to it pointed mt to the IP address 192.241.243.77. According to the web services that monitor and try to keep a database of evil hackers, this is supposedly originating from somewhere in New York, New York (as per this link) ... No, we can't blame the Russians or the Chinese, etc., this time!

Anyhow, I believe the threat is now contained, and the server should be chugging along pretty normally, and the website should be loading normally--as quickly as before this attack slowed it and even took it offline a few times. And another good news is that I was able to prevent any damage to the server, especially, the Eratosphere posts and archives.

Apologies to all who were inconvenience by the by the slow speed and even offline problems today. And especially, thank you all for your continued support!

Cheers,
...Alex