Earlier today, we discovered that none of our websites, StateDefenseForce.com, SDFOnlineStore.com, SDFHistory.org, or SGDFC.org were functioning. We immediately began testing access across multiple web browsers and devices to rule out local or caching issues, but it quickly became clear that this was a server-wide outage affecting all hosted services simultaneously.
After escalating the issue to our hosting provider and spending several hours troubleshooting, we identified the root cause as a fatal error at the kernel level of the server (Acts like the genetics of the internet). Once the kernel corruption was identified, the hosting provider was able to repair it and restore services, bringing all of our sites back online.
During our investigation, we also observed repeated pings and activity originating from overseas locations, specifically from Russia and China, targeting StateDefenseForce.com. This behavior stood out as highly unusual, as there is no practical or logical reason for traffic from those regions to be interacting with content focused on State Defense Force training, missions, and U.S.-based community operations. While this does not yet confirm these people had malicious intent, it is a factor we are actively investigating as part of the broader incident review.
At this time, we are continuing to analyze logs and system activity to determine exactly how this outage occurred and whether any malicious behavior contributed to the kernel-level failure. As an immediate precautionary measure, we will be implementing additional security controls over the coming days, including blocking IP traffic originating from countries that have no legitimate need to access our platforms.
We sincerely apologize to our community, partners, and supporters for the full-day outage. Reliability and availability are critically important to us, and we are taking this incident seriously. Moving forward, we will be hardening our server infrastructure even further to reduce the likelihood of a similar event occurring again and to better protect the platforms that support the State Defense Force community nationwide.
