Citybreak Online

Systems affected
Citybreak Online

Timeline
2023-10-30 09:50 – Citybreak Online began to have periods of instability
2023-10-31 10:35 – Citybreak Online stabilized

Problem Description
We have had brief periodic issues with bot traffic overwhelming specific resource usage
over the span of 30th to 31st of October. We’d already taken steps to mitigate bad traffic by
moving Citybreak Online behind the Cloudflare Web Application firewall (our recent
maintenance window). Unfortunately, as a consequence of the move, some of the network
level rules we had in place specifically for bots (or web crawlers) were no longer effective.
We have a temporary fix in place specifically prevent the bot traffic that is problematic and
are working on broader infrastructure changes to handle the underlying problem with
handling aberrant traffic and its effect on resource usage.

Actions taken
Prevent problematic bot traffic affecting services involved in booking activities, planning
infrastructure and code restructuring to handle unexpected or aberrant traffic patterns.

James Eagle
Tech Lead