Today, like the past few days, we have had some downtime. Apparently some script kids are enjoying themselves by targeting our server (and others). Sorry for the inconvenience.
Most of these ‘attacks’ are targeted at the database, but some are more ddos-like and can be mitigated by using a CDN. Some other Lemmy servers are using Cloudflare, so we know that works. Therefore we have chosen Cloudflare as CDN / DDOS protection platform for now. We will look into other options, but we needed something to be implemented asap.
For the other attacks, we are using them to investigate and implement measures like rate limiting etc.
It’s highly unlikely. Cloudflare is (I think) the biggest CDN provider and one of the biggest domain registrars. Whatever lemmy.world is paying them it’s inconsequential to their books. For a sense of scale, they own the IP address 1.1.1.1. (as an aside, 1.1.1.1 is a DNS host, but unlike the other popular ones it has a webpage so it’s very convenient for checking if your internet is down or if you’re having DNS issues)
Basically, the cost reward is way out of whack for them to consider ddosing such a small site.