Mastodon says its main server was subjected to a DDoS attack

The social networking software maker said Mastodon’s main server was hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack on Monday, rendering the instance unusable at times.

A large portion of the site was inaccessible, resulting in error messages or a full-screen outage warning being displayed.

Makers of decentralized, officially-run social media software Mastodon. social For example, he said in A Status update At around 7 a.m. ET on Monday, it was investigating the cyberattack.

By 9:05 a.m. ET, Mastodon said it had implemented a “countermeasure against the DDoS attack, and the site was accessible.” However, the company to caution Some instability may continue to emerge as the attack continues.

The cyberattack targeting Mastodon comes days after Bluesky, another decentralized social network, resolved several issues. Interruptions for days After a prolonged DDoS attack. As of Bluesky Latest update On April 17, the DDoS attack continued, but its service had been stable since April 16 at 9 PM PST.

Mastodon representatives did not immediately comment on the cause of the cyberattack when contacted by TechCrunch.

Distributed denial of service DDoS attacks rely on sending massive amounts of unwanted web traffic towards application or website servers, with the aim of stopping them from being connected to the Internet. These cyberattacks do not involve data theft, but DDoS attacks can be annoying for users.

DDoS attacks have become significantly more powerful over the years. Last year, network security company Cloudflare said it had mitigated what it says was the largest DDoS attack to date, with a peak of 29.7 terabytes per second, the equivalent of filling thousands of hard drives with data every minute.

When attacks target decentralized social networking services, the attacks can cause instability and outages, but not everyone is disconnected from the Internet. In the case of Bluesky, for example, those who moved their accounts to other providers, such as Blacksky, which operate on the same protocol and interact with Bluesky, were not affected.

Likewise, the attack on Mastodon has so far only targeted the largest server (mastodon.social) and not the many smaller instances that make up the full Mastodon social network.