GeekShed, the “free to use and family-friendly Internet Relay Chat network”, is currently suffering from a large scale DDoS attack that cripples their infrastructure consisting of 15 servers.

Even though those servers are in datacentres that offer DDoS-protection and are hosted with a number of large backbones they cannot seem to withstand the sheer volume of ICMP and UDP traffic directed at them.

Some of the servers have been null-routed by the hosting providers, others have been null-routed by GeekShed staff to “prevent damage to other machines and customers” according to network owner Phil.

The cause, as usual, seems to be a disgruntled user that has been banned from Chris Pirillo’s channel #chris who then engaged in spamming the channel with floodbots and after the channel staff has put a stop to the spamming, resorted to throwing large volumes of traffic at the servers using a botnet.

Since its split from the Wyldryde network, this is the second time somebody felt the necessity to bombard the network with junk traffic after being banned from #chris, however that miscreant was put to jail-time after the incident.

GeekShed staff are currently trying to sort out the situation and are working on restoring service for their users but since there is only so much one can do on the receiving end of a DDoS attack, service will be “intermittent” as Phil has posted on GeekSheds official website.

Note: At the time of publishing it seems the network is back in normal operation.

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