this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Programming

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Could a malicious user bring down small lemmy instances by over-subscribing? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago by Gerald@sh.itjust.works to c/programming@beehaw.org
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I just read how the federation works, but I'm worried about a growing pain. Say I was a malicious user, could I bring down a smaller Lemmy instance by subscribing to as many communities as possible? Or maybe even subscribing to a malicuous Lemmy instance that keeps spamming thousands of posts every second?

Couldn't that easily fill up a server's storage and effectively bring a server down? I guess you could block the malicious Lemmy instance (although wouldn't it be easy to create another?) and ban a user that subscribes to too many instances, however, it feels to me like a very hard problem to solve

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[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

DDOSing a Lemmy node would be trivial. The real traffic has takes down a few already. If it starts to happen maliciously, there are mitigations.

It's a lot easier just to screw with the network than it is to try to overload it outright.