I am almost finished with a project i am working on - a search engine project written 98% in perl. Previous versions of this software however has fallen victim to "click bombing", or, in other words, clicking many, many times. A maximum load limitator would prevent any more "clicks" after the system load reached beyond a predefined point. However it also blocked legitimate users, and thus could be used as a crude DOS attack. Since this new rewrite also can use a real database, like MySQL, instead of just flat files, this now becomes a stronger issue than ever - it would be possible for someone to lock the machine for hours or more if they try hard enough.

My question is "what are the possible solutions"? I have many, many solutions swirling in my head, and i've gotten even more by interested parties, but they're all theories. I'm looking for something that has acutally been used, and proven to work without adding too much overhead.

Any suggestions?

In reply to Design: thwarting "click bombing" by cyberconte

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