Topic: TalkImg.com - Image hosting for BitcoinTalk - page 9. (Read 20188 times)

Joker_joshue just posted IP-addresses (used in the DDOS). His webhost may not even allow him to not keep logs.

I decided that this plan is unnecessarily complicated, at least for now. So:
 - I already donated ~0.1 BTC to TalkImg, unconditionally and without discussing any of this with joker_josue.
 - If joker_josue merely promises that no logs are kept, then I think that that is sufficient for now, and I will exempt TalkImg from the proxy, once TalkImg is working again.

So if anyone is ultra-paranoid, be aware that your browser may start making connections to talkimg.com sometime soon. If you're really opposed to that, block it via a hosts file or something.

If linking with Talkimg works, you may not have to. If possible, a link to the website can be available on the page to compose a message and anyone who clicks on the image link is redirected there in a new tab. This will reduce the time to go search for the topic thread like I normally do.

The current image system only allows Jr. Member+ rank to post images, a forum system that works in similar way will work fine. There can also be some board restrictions for certain ranks, this will be for boards that gets lots of images regularly.

- Jay -

I guess it wouldn't be so bad if you only allowed ranked Members to upload images + add some limits similar to what we have with DMs. It would be more convenient, for sure.

The storage/data-transfer wouldn't be especially expensive, but it's a large feature to add, and then it's a whole new thing that has to be moderated. I wouldn't make something as open as TalkImg, since otherwise after a few years I'd be getting like 10 DMCA takedowns per day which I'd have to figure out some way of processing. It'd have to be somehow a lot more restricted so that the long-term moderation burden wouldn't be too high. I'd rather avoid having to do it at all.

I had always wondered why this was not available, especially after some of the issues we have run into with image hosting websites in the past. Is there any reason why it is the last option on the list (chronogically)? I assumed it was a difficult feature to implement and an expensive one too, but I do not have enough technical skills to confirm that.

Talkimg is a service that has become a big part of the forum. If the above cannot be readily done and a quicker fix is needed, I am all for exempting it from th proxy and making it an (official) unofficial hosting website for the forum.

- Jay -

Yeah, now the imageproxy is under a DDoS. (You may still see some images due to caching in your browser.)

I'm not going to try to fix this. It's really difficult to put a proxy behind DDoS protection, because the attacker can always find and take down the outbound IP. Even if the outbound IP is different from the inbound IP, and even if the outbound IP drops all incoming connections from the general Internet, the outbound IP's networking can be entirely taken down through a sufficiently-large IP flood, which makes the proxy stop working. Maybe it could theoretically be fixed by having dozens of outbound IPs, or downloading images via Tor, but the former would be difficult to set up and maintain, and the latter would degrade performance. So my intention has always been that the imageproxy would just be expendable in the event of a DDoS. My plan is as follows:

First, I'm just going to wait a few days. Often DDoS attacks are temporary. I'm not really sure what motivates them, but it costs money to keep them up, so they rarely last all that long. (I have a bit of a conspiracy theory that these random DDoS attacks are done by DDoS protection companies to make the Internet impossible to use without being behind DDoS protection...)

If the attack is still going on in a few days, I'll consider measures like these:
 - If there are any image hosts run by trustworthy companies where the privacy policy says that they don't keep logs, these could be exempted from the proxy. If you know of any, let me know.
 - Maybe bitcointalk.org could pay TalkImg a monthly fee for a contractual guarantee that they won't keep logs. TalkImg could then be exempted from the proxy, and furthermore they would have more resources to function well.
 - Bitcointalk.org could add support for uploading images directly.

With BTC the bad guys are pumping too :-D

It worked when I posted the image, but now I see "loading". So indeed, the forum's image proxy is affected.

According to iplocation.net: the first and last IP are from an ISP in Canada, the other in Switzerland. Looks like a regular botnet.

From the latest information I received from my host, this wave of attacks may be affecting more servers around the world.

Not fine. I have images on my own server and they are not loading too. Like I said now it's not something from talkimg but something related to forum server.

I am facing another attack, which is being contained by Cloudflare.  

So the response time may be longer than normal.


EDIT:
These guys don't give up. What's the goal?
Last 30min.:

Now let this phase calm down, so you can think about it calmly.  

the forum's image proxy is not fine, someone needs to check on him

If you can see this image, the forum's image proxy is working fine:

Joker_josue,  I think the decision to expand your service to another forum is up to you.

As it is now, you will lose a huge amount of users in altcoinstalks.com.  additionally,  some users from bitcointalk who also use the other forum might migrate to another tool that fit both forums.

I understand the costs, it is not a simple decision

The service is working but limited.

joker_josue, I think you set too aggressive bot protection. For images to be displayed on the forum, the user must go to the talkimg site and pass the CF antibot captcha. Only after that, the images are loaded.

oops, it seems like it's just a try

Images are not loading and I am sure it's has nothing to do with talkimg. This time it seems something wrong with forum server. Can someone confirm that they are having the same issue? You need the force to clear cache (Crtl+Shift+R) to check the issue.

Bot protection is probably the reason why my backups failed after August 11. I now get this:
It's not a priority, but I'd appreciate if you can whitelist my server. I'll PM the IP-address.

Open the thread and discuss with community of altcoinstalks
in my opinion it is the best option to talk about it with everyone, let's say it is a twin of bitcointalk focused on altcoins clearly as the name suggests

I'm telling you because with one shot you would have two communities to support you and it's not a bad thing

The point is that opening this possibility officially will bring more images that are not part of Bitcointalk, and we have members of this forum making backups of the images. This would force them to have to make backups of images that are used in other forums, increasing their backup resources.

Furthermore, it would also increase the resources needed for TalkImg. Would the community also support this?
I don't rule out the possibility of this happening, but I will have to evaluate the situation in more detail.