The Snap! Websites system counts the number of hits arriving to its servers. If the counters reach too high a number, the system asks the user to please slow down. If the request is not respected, then the system ends up blocking the user via the firewall.

The antihammering settings allows you to define the number of hits necessary before a slow down is requested and before a full block happens.

By default this plugin is turned off, although it is strongly advised to have it turned on, we do not force users of Snap! Websites to make use of this module. It is still a really good idea to have it to avoid potential problems from hackers.

Note 1: At this time the hits are counted using the IP address of the client. We will want to add a feature that let us see whether a certain page gets overly hit whether the same IP address is used or not.

Note 2: This feature is different from the one preventing a user to attempt to log in with the wrong credentials too many times. It comes in addition to that. In other words, you may block a brute force attempt to log in a user's account by using the antihammering too since too many hits one after another would prevent such brute force attempts in a way somewhat similar to the system that prevents too many invalid log in attempts.

Note 3: The anti-hammering currently only applies to main pages. Pictures and other download documents are rarely a problem in regard to hammering a system. We will implement additional anti-hammering capabilities for such files with time.