As well as the problems we saw earlier in the week with Wylie Online, some other vendors who share the same platform (Atypon) have also had problems. For those interested, this is a useful explanation from ACS. Our move to Open Athens next year should help reduce this sort of problem.

We are aware of some recent disruption experienced by EZProxy users attempting to access the ACS Publications website.  Last week the ACS Publications site experienced what was likely a malicious attack that generated an extraordinarily high number of automated requests.  Since dramatic spikes in usage can consume finite computing resources and cause an entire site to go offline, we take measures to ensure continued availability to as many users of our site as possible.

At that time our site was put into “Under Attack” mode, a countermeasure available to us from Cloudflare, the security provider available to sites hosted by Atypon.  The “Under Attack” mode is intended to prevent malicious, automated usage from consuming computing resources, while allowing legitimate users to continue to access the site.

Unfortunately, we have come to understand that EZProxy usage is disrupted by Cloudflare’s “Under Attack” mode.  EZProxy requests apparently share some of the same attributes that Cloudflare considers as potentially malicious.

We are working with Atypon to see if a solution is available, but nothing has been identified so far.  We are also in touch with our Wiley colleagues, as some on this list have noted that the same Cloudflare message occurred on the Wiley Online Library recently for the same reason.