The server we are on is experiencing a DOS (Denial Of Service) attack from a hacker. What happens is the hacker sends out viruses to various computers who will then send repeated pings to a specific server, all in an effort to shut the server down. The server admin tells me that the attacks are directed at another customer, and he’s already stopped an attack earlier this week.

To monitor the server for my site http://SpelChek.com I set up a script that tracks the heaviest server load for each hour. You can see the display at http://spelchek.com/peak_mon.php. You can see where the earlier attack started about 5am server time on Jan 1st and was stopped at 10am the next day. The current attack began at 11am today and is still going on.

A server load of below 3 is really good. A server load over 10 is considered excessive. The current server load is around 100.