Strange message when I try to join this forum

[coulonnus]

Now I see this message "Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds". Sometimes in French, sometimes in English.
Sometimes I may join, sometimes I may not. Am I am the only one? Who sends this message? What are its "humanness" criteria?

[Davydov]

I've been getting this too for the last couple of days. I'm guessing it's meant to filter out suspected AI bots, but I've heard nothing officially.

[Choralia]

I manage the server of these forums, and maybe someone noticed that, a couple of days ago, the service has been unavailable for few hours. The website was subject to a DDOS attack that caused an excessive usage of server resources. The server is shared with other websites, so the hosting provider temporarily suspended this account to prevent that troubles propagate to other websites.

As this is not the first time we receive a DDOS attack, I had already configured a Cloudflare shield that includes a specific operation mode, name Under Attack Mode (UAM). UAM is now active, and it's the function providing the human check. Details about UAM are not disclosed by Cloudflare to prevent that the human check can be easily bypassed by attackers, although some general information are available on the Cloudflare documentation.

I'll disable UAM after checking that the DDOS attack is over.

Max

[Davydov]

Thanks Max.