Repeated Request Patterns: Anatomy of a Client-Side Flood
Simulation: Repeated Request Pattern & Why It Overwhelms Sites
Interactive, evidence-focused simulation. This demonstration visualizes the reported pattern where a page issues repeated, randomized search requests — shown here as a safe simulation (no network requests).
What the community reported
Public posts and community threads document that an archive CAPTCHA page contained a short client-side script that used a timer (reported ~300 ms) to repeatedly construct and issue requests like
https://gyrovague.com/?s=random. Those observations and screenshots are cited in the Sources section below. This post explains the pattern, shows a safe simulation, and lists mitigation steps.
Simulation of Repeated Request Attack (visual-only)
// Reported pattern (for explanation only — do NOT execute):
// setInterval(function() {
// fetch("https://gyrovague.com/?s=" + Math.random().toString(36).substring(2, 3 + Math.random() * 8));
// }, 300);
Technical breakdown — step by step
Client-side code creates a repeating timer. The browser executes its callback every N milliseconds (reported values in community posts: ~300 ms).
On each tick the script builds a request URL containing a randomized query parameter. Randomization prevents simple caching and forces the server to compute or fetch a unique response.
One open tab sending ~3 req/sec produces ~10k req/day. Multiply that by many visitors (or automated pages), and the origin can become overload-bound: CPU, database, bandwidth or connection limits are exhausted.
For small personal blogs or low-capacity hosts this pattern can cause slowdowns, failed queries, and outages — which are the typical practical effects of DDoS-level traffic.
Recommended mitigations (concise)
- Rate-limit heavy endpoints (429 responses for excess requests).
- Serve lightweight cached responses for unknown/random queries.
- Block or challenge requests with obvious randomized tokens at the edge (CDN/WAF).
- Monitor and alert on repeated, short-interval requests to search or search-like endpoints.
- Collect request headers / timestamps for forensic reports if needed.
Comments
Post a Comment