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So, today I got banned from the 4 overflows because my IP address was hitting the site like 5,000 times an hour. Right now I am using a different IP to access the site.

My question is, is there a way to stop someone from spoofing my IP address?

or

Is it more likely that there is a virus on my computer that is making all the hit, requiring me to reinstall Windows.

Any help is appreciated.

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If it is explicitly just your IP Address and not a subnet that is detected as attacking,
It is very likely it happened actually from your IP address.

Moreover, it is not easy to spoof a public IP address on the internet.
Where do you get your IP address from?
If it is allocated from a broadband/DSL subscription, it could very well be rotating over other subscribers.

Yet, it would be interesting to know which virus has been attracted towards the stackoverflow servers like this.

Could you have something like the firefox ReloadEvery addon going berserk?

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  • I have the ReloadEvery plugin running, but it is set to every 10 seconds, which is less than 720 requests an hour. – Tyler Carter Jul 26 '09 at 17:02
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    You got your 'virus' there. – nik Jul 26 '09 at 17:03
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    What you call a 'request' is very different from what a Web Server calls a request. You might want to quickly check with a packet capture and stop the addon fast. – nik Jul 26 '09 at 17:05
  • Yep .. I'm going to go uninstall it immediately as well as reset the modem. – Tyler Carter Jul 26 '09 at 17:05
  • Well, you can have it around but don't start it on such active forum servers -- they would be looking for 'abnormal' traffic like this. They will not like to burn power over refreshes (or potential service attacks). – nik Jul 26 '09 at 17:10

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