Mastodon says its flagship server was hit by a DDoS attack
8 hours ago
- #DDoS Attack
- #Cybersecurity
- #Decentralized Social Media
- Mastodon's flagship server, mastodon.social, faced a DDoS attack on Monday, leading to inaccessibility and error messages for users.
- Countermeasures were implemented by 9:05 a.m. ET, restoring site access, though some instability persisted due to the ongoing attack.
- The attack mirrors recent DDoS incidents on Bluesky, another decentralized social network, which has since stabilized after days of outages.
- Mastodon's communications head highlighted that the decentralized Fediverse structure protected users on other servers from being affected.
- DDoS attacks overwhelm servers with junk traffic to cause disruptions but do not involve data theft; they have grown in scale, with recent record-setting attacks mitigated by Cloudflare.
- In both Mastodon and Bluesky's cases, only specific servers were targeted, showcasing how decentralization can limit the impact of such cyberattacks.