Arch Linux Remains Under Attack as DDoS Enters Week 2: Here's a Workaround
Arch Linux, a popular and fiercely independent distribution, has been under siege for over a week now. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is crippling the main website, as well as the Arch User Repository (AUR) and community forums. Despite the efforts of the volunteer staff to mitigate the attack, the situation remains dire.
Unfortunately, we still don't know who is behind this attack or how they're conducting it. The Arch Linux team has remained tight-lipped about the incident, only stating that the project is "currently experiencing an ongoing denial of service attack" that primarily impacts the main web page, AUR, and forums.
While we can speculate about the motivations behind the attack – perhaps a group of hackers trying to gauge the defenses of the lightly guarded Arch sites or someone simply taking out their frustrations with the distribution – only the Arch Linux team knows for sure. As of now, they're working closely with their hosting provider to address the issue and are also exploring DDoS protection providers that meet certain standards.
A crucial factor in this decision is the ethical standards of the service provider. The Arch Linux project is built on a foundation of free software principles, which may explain why they're hesitant to adopt mainstream services like Cloudflare. While Cloudflare does offer free DDoS protection for open-source projects, its business model is geared towards larger corporations.
Meanwhile, the attacks continue, causing partial or intermittent accessibility issues for users trying to reach the site or download installation ISOs, documentation, fetch new software packages, or update programs. For Arch Linux users who are unable to access archlinux.org, they can try using mirrors from their pacman-mirrorlist package instead of relying on the reflector tool.
For AUR disruptions, this means a bit more work if you're not a regular git user – but for those who have cloned packages directly from the GitHub Arch Linux mirror using the command `git clone --branch
In other words, for now, users can expect to continue facing trouble accessing any Arch Linux resources. Fingers crossed that Arch Linux's web presence will be back to normal soon!
Staying Safe Online: A Guide for Arch Linux Users
For those who are not familiar with the process of cloning packages from the GitHub mirror, here is a step-by-step guide:
* Open your terminal and type `git clone --branch
This process can take some time, but it's an effective workaround until the attacks are resolved.