possible ddos?

[Hell Puppy]

This should be a non-issue for most any adult host these days. Sounds like a brute force password attack. I'm surprised you dont see that several times a day if you're not blocking it.

And it certainly shouldn't cripple the server even if you let 'em thru.

Off the top of my head, I would only expect that to happen if you were doing something like running perl scripts on the entrance to the members area. Perl is interpreted and can be easily swamped when pounded with volume.

A good SA should be able to look at your logs and see exactly what happened during that time period.