ISFDB downtime starting October 21, 2026

For the last couple of weeks malicious bots have been hammering the ISFDB server almost non-stop, which made it effectively unavailable except when the bots took brief breaks.

 

On top of that, earlier today we learned that the PHP programming language, which is used by the ISFDB Wiki as well as by millions of other Web sites, has a crucial vulnerability. We have taken the site down and will be working on patching PHP. It won't address the bot problem, but at least it will address the security issue.

This post will be updated once PHP is patched.

Recent bot attacks

September 29, 2026: We have been seeing more sophisticated bot attacks bypassing our safeguards over the last few weeks. If the site is very slow or even appears to be down, bot attacks are most likely to blame. We are looking into ways to address the issue.

August 19/20 2026 bot attacks

We are currently under attack by bots. The attacks are intermittent and last from minutes to hours. Response times may be poor until they are over. 

2026-02-12 downtime

The ISFDB Web site came under a concentrated bot attack on Thursday, February 12, 2026 around 6am server (EST) time. We began deploying countermeasures in the afternoon. It may take another 24 hours or so for the new settings to be set up and propagated across the internet. Sorry about the interruption!

 

2026-02-13 9:05am EST update: The countermeasures have been deployed and the site is back up. 

2025-08-26 - Unscheduled downtime

3pm:

 

The ISFDB server is experiencing difficulties due to very high loads. Some Web pages may not load properly. There is no ETA at this time.

3:12pm:

Performance should be back to normal. 

2025-06-17 - Workaround for network connectivity problems

If you are running into timeout and "server not found" errors while trying to access the ISFDB server, the following steps should be able to help if you are running Windows:

1. Press and hold the Windows key + R to open the "Run" dialog box
2. Type ipconfig /flushdns into the text field and click OK

This command tells your PC's Windows to get the latest internet address for the ISFDB server, which should fix the immediate problem. Whatever issues the ISFDB server is currently experiencing may still result in occasional "timeout" and "server not found" errors, but they seem to be relatively rare. All you have to do is reload the displayed page (press F5) to get past them.

 

It's possible that the hosting company may change its configuration settings yet again, in which case you will need to re-do the steps listed above, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. 

2025-06-16 - Unscheduled ISFDB downtime

The ISFDB server is effectively down due to network problems. This announcement will be updated once the problems have been resolved. There is no ETA at this time.

 

2025-06-17 update: Things were mostly OK this morning, but then, at 11:53am server time (EDT), the server went back to the pattern that we saw yesterday: up for 5-10 seconds, then down for 1-2 minutes, then up again for 5-10 seconds, down for 1-2 minutes, etc. There is no ETA at this time.