email updates

i love when our IT department sends out emails regarding the functionality of our website. it makes me feel like i work a very high-profile, very top-secret, very dangerous job:


Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 12:40 PM
To: ala-allstaff
Subject: ALA Web Site

This morning our web site came under attack again, causing the site to be slow to the point of non-responsive.  I should say that it came under heavier attack than usual, since we're always under attack.  The extremely short version is that we were the target of a denial of service attack, that is, a huge number of requests were sent to the web site, from a rotating series of sources, making it impossible for the servers to keep up with the requests.  Since the source of the requests isn't fixed, blocking those requests is more difficult.

We're currently stable, and are watching closely.