[Fixed] Degraded Performance for Ken's Study Planner

Only with Patience can you Develop your Problem-solving Skills

Dear Ken’s Study Planner users,

Thanks for choosing and using Ken’s Study Planner!

In recent days, Ken’s Study Journey discovered that Ken’s Study Planner loaded slower sometimes, degrading its performance and user experience.

After my investigation last week, it was caused by the mass scans for phpMyAdmin modules (not exist) triggering the security system (Web-Application Firewall, WAF), causing Core Servers (handling encrypted user data) to overload.

Fortunately, the main Ken’s Study Journey website (www.kenstudyjourney.cn) with articles is not affected and there were no service disruptions.

Continuous Mass Scans from Different Places

The scanners very frequently changed their IP Addresses (among many ISPs, countries/regions) and User-Agent strings (i.e. Device/Browser Types) with the same sets of URLs ending with “/index.php?lang=en”.

After system reminders/warnings and displaying on the Reminder Board, the scanning does not stop. Instead, the scanners used more IP addresses (evading the WAF Security Control) and continued their mass scans.

- This means banning IP addresses is not a solution.

For more information, you may pay attention to the Red Backgrounds in the “Reminder Board of Threatening Ken's Study Journey Website/Internet Security” webpage.

According to the Terms of Service (Section 18), Ken’s Study Journey investigated based on the phpMyAdmin module scanned.

“Ken’s Study Journey and systems reserve the right to track users, based on similarities of behaviours, with repeated violations and evasion of tracking, including but not limited to frequently changing IP addresses, registering multiple accounts and using other’s account(s).”

Penalising Mass Scans with Self-developed Technology

Since August 2023, Ken’s Study Journey has strived for website security, penalising mass scans of website hidden modules (e.g. PHP, ASP, JSP, SQL, phpMyAdmin and WordPress) with the self-developed WAF and Automated Reminder System.

This system discovers and penalises hundreds of scan attempts each day after implementation, ensuring the website and user data security.

Solved with an Improved Algorithm

After my investigation and analysis, Ken’s Study Journey has improved the algorithm for the WAF and Automated Reminder System, not overloading Ken’s Study Journey Core (C) Servers.

Ken’s Study Journey Reminder:

Patience is important in problem-solving. Only with the patience can you develop your problem-solving skills.

Thank you for your understanding and patience for this important matter, which will help students strive for outstanding results.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused by the recent degraded performance.

Ken’s Study Journey

28 April 2024

Hong Kong (SAR), China

Did you Know?

Technology isn’t Easy, Development is Busy

Many self-developed technologies (including this Automated Reminder System) heavily used computer algorithms (e.g. Recursion, Insertion Sort).

Examples of URLs (phpMyAdmin) Scanned (Not Exist)

https://www.kenstudyjourney.cn/admin/phpmyadmin/index.php?lang=en

https://www.kenstudyjourney.cn/sql/myadmin/index.php?lang=en

https://www.kenstudyjourney.cn/phpmyadmin2017/index.php?lang=en

https://www.kenstudyjourney.cn/php-myadmin/index.php?lang=en

https://www.kenstudyjourney.cn/mysql/pMA/index.php?lang=en