Mastodawn

Hi, I'm micr0, the creator of Altbot.

Almost a year ago, your incredible generosity helped us raise the funds to buy the server that Altbot runs on today (locally and privately) It's been operating from my home ever since, and I'm so grateful for the support that made that possible.

But now, the situation has become unsustainable. My home network is under a sustained, targeted DDoS attack aimed at taking Altbot offline. And unfortunatly this isn't just a threat to the bot, it's a serious security and privacy concern for my family.

A lot of people are probabaly going to be asking the same question I did: "Who is doing this?"
but the honest answer is: I don't know, and I likely never will. These attacks are launched through botnets and proxies designed specifically to hide the source. Figuring out the "who" is nearly impossible. The only thing I can do is focus on the "how to stop it."

Running this critical service from a residential address is no longer viable. To protect Altbot and my family, we need to move the server to a professional data center with proper, enterprise DDoS mitigation.

The Goal: $2,880 to cover 12 months of secure colocation.

This will provide a secure, stable home for Altbot with:

Enterprise-grade DDoS protection
99.95%+ uptime guarantee
24/7 monitoring and security
Separation from my personal home network

Donations can be made via:

Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/micr0byte/goal?g=0
GitHub Sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/micr0-dev (More direct, Fewer fees)
Ethereum: 0xC992E57236eb9F30E79d0469446a6CF08Be05939

This isn't just about maintaining a service. It's about ensuring that an important accessibility tool remains available for everyone who depends on it, while also protecting my family's privacy and safety.

Please consider supporting if you can. If you're unable to donate, boosts are incredibly valuable for raising awareness.

Thank you for your support and for believing in Altbot's mission.

#Altbot #Accessibility

Buy Micr0byte a Coffee

Become a supporter of Micr0byte today!

Ko-fi

Micr0byte Sep 19, 2025

I've seen the discussion about the colocation cost. I know the number is steep. Believe me, I know.

But I have to be direct: I cannot and will not go into personal debt to cover the difference anymore. That is the cycle that has left me feeling broken and burnt out. Every single time, I get some donations, cover the rest myself, and then drown financially.

This time, the funding goal is the actual cost. If we don't meet it, I cannot make it happen. it's simple.

This isn't an ultimatum. it's a hard boundary I have to set for my own survival. Altbot's future depends on us, as a community, meeting this need together.

I'm posting this, and then I am turning off my phone and going camping with my family. I will be completely offline until I return. I need to disconnect to protect my mental health.

The Ko-fi and other links are active. Thank you to everyone who has supported, donated, and boosted.

I'll see you all in a few days

Simon Zerafa Sep 19, 2025

Have you approached anyone about corporate sponsorship? 🙂

I would imagine there might be someone or a company out there that might be willing to sponsor some or all of the costs.

Perhaps someone will come up with other suggestions but Cloudflare or someone in the AI space might be interested?

@jerry Do you have any ideas who could be approached about sponsorship? 🙂

Micr0byte Sep 21, 2025

@simonzerafa @jerry I have not approached any one and no one has approached me just yet. I would have to be very careful with that tho as privacy is very important for me. I would only agree on terns that are fair to my users

Simon Zerafa Sep 21, 2025

Of course!

If someone should approach your or you seek sponsorship then it's up to you to accept or reject it based on terms 🙂

Edit: Forgot to suggest crowd-funding, assuming I've not already missed that.

<smitty />Sep 27, 2025

@simonzerafa @micr0 @jerry Possibly someone like @dequesystems or Level Access?

Ada (Villain arc) 🏳️‍⚧️Sep 19, 2025

@micr0 you provide a crucial service, and therefore I have a level of respect for you greater than most. I unfortunately don't have any money, but I can help make this post seen. Good luck.

Anthropy Sep 19, 2025

@micr0 that's steep for a single year, idk if you can keep that up forever, but I'm happy to chip in a little for now .. have you considered using reverse proxies like Cloudflare's to block the attacks? Or are you already using that?

edit: also sorry to hear you're in this mess, some people just want to watch the world burn I guess.

@anthropy @micr0 I was thinking the same thing. There's a free Cloudflare tier but I'm not sure they'll be super thrilled to take him on while under a DDoS attack (depending on how much traffic the saddos can generate).

That "el" person on IRC Sep 19, 2025

@davep @anthropy @micr0 the opposite, actually. CF often reaches out right at that moment, sometimes even to sponsor. that's how they built their brand. the gratitude they get was always a big part of their marketing.

@el_on_libera @anthropy @micr0 Oh, that's excellent. I just vaguely remember someone (Troy Hunt maybe) having problems with his free plan due to a massive attack. I think he upgraded in the end.

Micr0byte Sep 19, 2025

@anthropy I know its steep but I cannot make do with getting some donations and then covering the rest myself as I am not in a good financial situation myself right now.

Anthropy Sep 19, 2025

@micr0 that totally makes sense, I'm just wondering if there were cheaper options available that'd work, but I'm sure you've considered things.

It's shitty some depraved people would do something malicious like that to something purely made to just help people

Micr0byte Sep 19, 2025

@anthropy and yes I am already using tunnels, which is why I know this is more than just an IP leak, all the signs point to deliberate malice.

tapafon Sep 21, 2025

@anthropy @micr0 Free Cloudflare plan only covers specific ports. If your service (f.e. Matrix homeserver) requires non-standard port, you're out of luck (either DNS only, switch to paid plan or disable federation, which is run on non-standard port 8448).

neofox_up_sleep

@micr0 quick question out of ignorance: how'd the IP get to the public? like, isn't altbot working trough the fediverse? how did they figure out your IP?

just curious, sorry 👀

Micr0byte Sep 19, 2025

@mambuco it is, and even then its working through tunnels, it probabaly got leaked through our cellular failover, but I'm not sure to be honest.

Tobias Fiebig Sep 19, 2025

@micr0 Moin... as a person with a 40Gbit hobby... what kind of resources are needed for alt-bot? Might be able to chip in some in-kind in EU; Including IP/Transit. Also can likely get some DDoS protection from some of my upstreams.

Micr0byte Sep 19, 2025

@tfiebig altbot runs on a custom enterprise server, the main prerequisites to run this instance or similar is an nvidia GPU A5000 or more powerful.

Tobias Fiebig Sep 19, 2025

@micr0 Hrm, no GPUs atm in my main PoPs. Does it have to be one A5000, or would, e.g., eight V100 do as well?

Tobias Fiebig Sep 19, 2025

@micr0 Oh, and alternatively... do you see any option to maybe terminate traffic on distributed nodes, and just ship the compute to the server where it currently is?

Micr0byte Sep 19, 2025

@tfiebig thats kinda ish what I am doing, my actual set up is a little more complicated, but I dont know how they were able to find my IP and stuff when everything I have is tunneled,

Tobias Fiebig Sep 19, 2025

@micr0 Hrm... lot's of options... do especially if you happen to have a static IP at home. What volume of inbound are you getting/what kind of DoS is it? ('just' traffic, or upper layer stuff?)

Micr0byte Sep 19, 2025

@tfiebig how much vram is that? it sounds like it would work, the exact model altbot uses is: https://huggingface.co/AIDC-AI/Ovis2-8B

AIDC-AI/Ovis2-8B · Hugging Face

We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.

Tobias Fiebig Sep 19, 2025

@micr0 V100 are 16gb cards.

Micr0byte Sep 19, 2025

@tfiebig thats more than enough then. altbot runs on a single 24gb card (A5000)

Tobias Fiebig Sep 19, 2025

@micr0 I can check if there is an option to get such a box (8x V100 16GB) for the project next week, but don't hold your breath/no promises.

don Elías (como los buses) 🥨Sep 20, 2025

@micr0 that's a fair price, I just donated a bit, thanks for your service 🐧

Snow Sep 20, 2025

@micr0 do you have a XMR wallet?

Raahs Sep 20, 2025

@micr0 Hi, I wasn't aware what Altbot is for. Duckduckgo search pointed towards GitHub, where I found this information: "Accessibility bot designed to enhance the Fediverse by generating alt-text descriptions for images, video, and audio." Thank you for doing this! I will gladly chip in and promise to ask 2 more people to do so. It won't be enormous/outstanding but I hope it will meet more little contributions. ♥️🧠✊

Mrco Sep 21, 2025

@micr0 Sent some ETH from XMR. Hope that works. Not used to that type of transaction. 😄

Graham Downs Sep 21, 2025

@micr0 I don't suppose the Oracle Always Free plan is a viable option? Just in the short term, as a stopgap to get it off your home network?

Otherwise, maybe @hetzner can work something out for you? Maybe in exchange for a "Hosted on Hetzner" tagline on your responses or something?

Brad Koehn Sep 21, 2025

@micr0 is hosting it behind CloudFlare an option?

Also, can the system be designed to distribute the work to lots of workers? I’ve got small machines with GPUs that are idle almost all the time that could take on some load.

I do lots of those kinds of public good projects already, hosting mirrors and NTP servers. I’d be happy to use some excess GPU for the cause.

Jan Jansen Sep 22, 2025

@micr0 maybe @Mastodon itself can help with it? As a great project to help the fediverse be a better place for everyone

Jill ☁️Sep 22, 2025

@twojays @micr0 @Mastodon +1

Jill ☁️Sep 22, 2025

@micr0 Do you have a specific professional data center already in mind? Will it be GDPR-compliant and will the media still be processed and not stored as before?

Thank you for keeping it up!

Lucas Treffenstädt Sep 22, 2025

@micr0 maybe @ubernauten could support here?

uberspace.de Sep 24, 2025

@micr0 @lucas we think altbot is an important service but we are not sure if we are the right hoster to help here. We are not that big and we do mostly shared hosting, so supporting a service currently under attack is something we can't offer with a good feeling without a lot more information.