Usually when this is done it is to demonstrate the effectiveness of your botnet. Most of the attackers nowadays are profit motivated, so it won’t be like the old days when hacktivism was a more common motivation for DDOS.
Now the botnet operators usually sell their services to people that don’t know how to operate one themselves. Its garbage all the way down.
Previously in the forums one of the admins indicated that they were working with their hosting provider on blocking the traffic. There is some more info here: https://archlinux.org/news/recent-services-outages/
Due to the ongoing nature of this it looks like the Arch team are opting to keep the details of the attack internal for the time being. This would be a standard procedure to prevent the attackers from changing tactics to adjust to the mitigations the arch team are implementing.
I’m not going to state plainly that this is absolutely the case. That Arch team is keeping quiet about the intimate details right now, but will probably continue their track record of transparency once the attack has ceased, or the attacker will publicly take credit. We will know more soon, but if we could bet on this, I would bet its some botnet operator attempting to prove the effectiveness of their network.
Just encountered the same problem. And yeah, AUR’s down due to DDOS.
:: Synchronizing package databases...
endeavouros is up to date
core is up to date
extra is up to date
multilib is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
there is nothing to do
:: Looking for PKGBUILD upgrades...
:: Looking for AUR upgrades...
:: Looking for devel upgrades...
error: error sending request for url (https://aur.archlinux.org/rpc): error trying to connect: unexpected EOF
At first I thought it was because of my proxy server. Checked, and found that it’s because AUR’s not functional. Then found that it’s already been two days.
I would hope that Arch -team would be little bit more active about providing information when they have situation like this. It’s not nice to be in the dark and assume that there’s something wrong on your setup…
I understand that Arch is community project, but it doesn’t take that long to write message into website.
One of the reasons why I went back into world of Debian (at least for a while) are situations like this.
In the meantime if we need to install a software, I’m assuming it would be better to download the source file and compile it ourselves ? And may be once AUR is up and running replace it with AUR version (for easier updates down the line)? Fortunately I had finished installing software on my fresh install yesterday, so I’m set for the time being at least.
Maybe it’s because there’s this “Arch boom” where Arch and Arch-based distros enjoy great influx of new users and now it seems good target to create chaos while sametime trying to push dodgy packages to AUR.
Or maybe someone got kicked out of project or something and decided to ruin it for everyone.
I honestly think this has less to do with Arch and is more directed at Valve who choose to use Arch as the base system for their Gaming System. Several Companies look benefit if Valve fails.
And as far as attacking Microsoft well they shoot themselves in the foot enough no one needs to do anything but watch them fall. (Maybe a slow dramatic fall but a fall none the less )
Can’t thy go bother Microsoft or did thy pay them? 
)