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ISP Forced Out of Business by DoS
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Jan 22, 2002 09:25 AM
from the sucky-reality dept.
from the sucky-reality dept.
flyhmstr writes "According to a report on ISPReview Cloud Nine have been forced off line and out of business thanks to the actions of crackers deciding to go play with some DoS tools." It's only getting worse.
The kids are getting more and more aggressive as time goes on and
it gets easier and easier to launch a large scale DoS. As any
techie knows, fixing the problem is far easier said then done... but
as a frequent recipient of the sharp end of the DoS stick, I sure
wish it wasn't an issue.
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ISP Forced Out of Business by DoS
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whoops (Score:5, Funny)
Re:whoops (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:which side of the law is our community on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:which side of the law is our community on? (Score:5, Insightful)
To reiterate and expand:
The DoS-ers are causing material and practical harm to the equipment of others.
The LiVid guys etc. are doing something useful and practical with something that they own.
The two situations are _diametrically opposed_.
FP.
(I don't mind being redundant if it helps some people get the point!)
Re:which side of the law is our community on? (Score:4, Insightful)
The unwashed masses out there see both of these as the same thing...
That is the problem. I always try to explain it this way: There are good doctors, and there are bad doctors. There are good lawyers, and there are bad lawyers. There are good cops, and there are bad cops. (etc.) And there are good hackers, and bad hackers.
Re:which side of the law is our community on? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty easy to tell good laws from bad ones, using objective standards:
Good laws protect individual freedoms and provide a level playing field for everyone.
Bad laws destroy liberty and favor special interests over the good of the whole.
Re:which side of the law is our community on? (Score:5, Troll)
Writing a DoS tool is not a crime. Using it on someone else is. What's so hard to understand?
Re:which side of the law is our community on? (Score:4, Funny)
Programs don't kill servers, malformed packets kill servers.
Re:which side of the law is our community on? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course there is: to test the robustness of a piece of equipment against such attacks.
There are ways to deal with DDOS attacks, but, unfortunately, they require the cooperation of most parties involved in the aggregation of "hostile" traffic toward a given target. It does no good for the target to simply drop "hostile" packets, because upstream "friendly" traffic might still get congested. The upstream routers need to be told to stop forwarding the "hostile" traffic.
And this raises two problems: 1) How do you deploy the software to an existing router infrastructure to allow this back-propagation of "stop forwarding hostile traffic to me" messages. 2) How do you identify traffic as "hostile"?
There are techniques for guessing what traffic is actually hostile, based on packet signatures (often the source address is spoofed, the attack is distributed, or otherwise useless), without dropping too much friendly traffic. It is better, though, to lose some friendly traffic, rather than all of it -- failing gracefully, as it were.
But retrofitting a standard DDOS defense will prove to be difficult, given the diversity of players involved (and this is one area where IP carrier consolidation would be a good rather than a bad thing) -- just look at the difficulty in bootstrapping IPv6 in the network.
Re:which side of the law is our community on? (Score:4, Informative)
Doctors study illness not to cause it, but to cure it.
I know that politicians, when dealing with computer technology, like to follow your facetious argument. The problem is that the general public has a hard time realizing programs are more like a leatherman multitool (wide purpose) and less like an EEG machine (one purpose). I've used Word to doodle, or play games (it's quite fun mangling the program using VBScript). Is it a crime for me to do so? After all, the same skills have been used to write virii or munge the security of a LAN.
I understand the twin concepts of responsibility and accountability: those are what keep me from considering any hacking. I've almost always known how to break security on any computer system I used; those two ethical precepts kept me from actually doing it (despite often strong temptation to the contrary). And if they were taught in public schools- and made to stick- script kiddies probably would be managable.
This is not to absolve network admins of their responsibility (to have a good firewall, practice proper security, etc). I just think that maybe we need consider the possibility that where the slashdot community stands isn't pro or con, but a sensible and logical medium.
Ethics (Score:5, Interesting)
It has nothing to do with hackers, crackers, RIAAs, MPAAs or the color green - it has all to do with freedom of information:
- I support freedom of information, and by extension those that help make information free.
- I'm against restriction of information (any kind of information - bad, good, usefull or useless). Naturaly i am by extension against those that try to constrain that freedom.
- Which side of the law am i on?
Neither side. My ethics are independent of the law.
Going back to this specific case, i'm against however did the DDoS attacks because they went against other people's freedom to give and receive information.
We're in the grey area. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not a black and white issue. A DoS attack is both illegal and imoral, as what you are doing hurts a large group of people. Exposing bad security in e-book files will help people in the long run. (Although it will help the copyright holders and not us
As for the general population, it depends entirely on what the media reports. They can report that "hackers" have cracked a protection scheme, or they can report that a digital protection scheme was proven inadequate. Both are technically true, but each favors one group as the good guy. Unfortunately, since news is an entertainment forum, the first is more likely to be reported.
Until the general population is tech savvy enough to understand these issues, the media will have complete control over their opinions.
Cheers,
Phathead
Re:which side of the law is our community on? (Score:4, Insightful)
Compare this to stuff like DeCSS, Felton's work on SDMI and the rest. Showing why something doesn't work or getting additional functionality out of a product just isn't the same as maliciously depriving a business of the resources it requires to survive.
It isn't hard to explain but what is hard is getting the message out when Disney and the like are spouting their propaganda at 11 and with the simple fact that this isn't a bullet issue for the proverbial Joe Average.
I wonder why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I wonder why? (Score:5, Insightful)
This just seems to be part of human nature; I haven't seen much change in the percentage of people who behave this way since my childhood (1960's) anyway. The problem is that the world today is so interconnected, and also dependent on technologies whose webs of interconnection are more fragile than we like to think, that the 2/1000 with the desire to damage can do a lot more damage to a lot more people than ever before.
I am a bit discouraged myself about whether or not this can be stopped on the Internet, personally.
sPh
Re:I wonder why? (Score:5, Interesting)
In real life, you can't just take something from someone else, unless you're much bigger than them. When you're online, you just need to have the ability to access a lot of bandwidth. So, if someone has a channel on IRC that I want, I DoS the server, split it and take the channel. Now, supposedly this doesn't happen as much these days, but it used to happen fairly often back in the day.
There's also online cliques, who for lack of better explaination seem to act as online gangs. Loose groups of friends who associate, talk, and dislike the same people. Thus, much like real life gangs, if one gets ticked off at another, they get their friends to make their life hellish for the opposing party. I wouldn't be suprised if they DoS'd a dialup user just in an attempt to knock him offline and went a little overboard. Or were trying to DoS an IRC bot. Or even a webpage.
Of course, I really have no idea what caused this incident. This is mostly just speculation. But I'm fairly certain at least one script kiddie has had similar motives in mind during his mischief. Kids will be kids, and that involves doing stupid stuff that they don't understand the consequences of. That doesn't mean we should string them up, but it does mean we should make efforts to make it more difficult for them to do damage.
Re:I wonder why? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think writing software of any type should be a crime, but I think in cases where there is clear damage (like this company that went under) the usage of the script should be treated as a criminal matter. This could easily involve conspiracy, vandalism etc. charges.
I was originally tempted to start releasing poisoned scripts, scripts that would work as intended when pointed at local machines but would have undesired consequences (hard disk corruption, file deletion etc) if used against external domains. I'd hate to see somebody harmed through legitimate use of the scripts though (auditing a site you have permission to audit from a remote location for instance).
uh...no? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wonder why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is probably closer to the truth than most people realize.
I will agree with this. These kids are doing this to make themselves feel powerful. They want to feel important, significant. If they were made to feel their significance by the people to whom they should be significant - their parents - perhaps they would be less likely to seek a feeling of power in mindless destruction. Though there is no guarantee - even a person without excuse, loved, cared for, etc. can lack the self-control to tame their baser desires.
If you think about it, you realize it is only possible to hurt someone else (or their property) if you feel like you are hurting yourself.
Now I have to disagree - sort of. Their indulgence in malice and cruelty, their seeking after the thrill of power does them harm. But in their self absorbtion they are only aware of how good it feels to wield that power - to feel important. They do not feel hurt, they feel powerful.
The really sad thing is, when we find someone who is hurting, and has demonstrated this to us by hurting someone else, we hurt them more by punishing them. Thats a human approach, but it will only result in larger problems. When someone hurts us we should help them by giving them a hug... or something
Here I have to disagree - for several reasons. First: If someone cannot exersise enough self-control to refrain from hurting others they must be externally controlled by someone else (the state or their parents) - either by actual physical restraint or by the credible threat of punishment. Also, while they still need "a hug" love and acceptance from those from whom it is due - now that is not enough. I don't think their can be healing without honest regret (not just regret for being caught but for being *wrong*) - that is up to the criminal, no one can either force them through punishment or manipulate them through compassion to arrive at that repentance. There also can't be healing without suffering real (depending on the crime even harsh) consequences. Even kids have an inate sense of justice (that I believe is valid) and that even criminals will acknowledge. It does not do the do the victim or society at large - but especially the criminal - any favors by bypassing the requirements of justice. A penitant criminal who has been punished for his crimes can start again. A penitant criminal who has escaped punishment will feel the unfairness of that escape and a continued sense of guilt. He will be crippled in his ability to begin anew. An unrepentant criminal will take either scenario as an excuse to continue in their crime.
Re:Extreme? (Score:4, Insightful)
WHAT!! (Score:4, Funny)
ha ha ha.. this comming from the kingpen of DOS
Got to be something more to this than is reported (Score:3, Offtopic)
It all seems very strange to me.
must have been the straw... (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't see a healthy, competent ISP being put out of business by dos attacks. Yet.
Sadly, Laws Won't Do It (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure what the real answer is, though. I find myself reading these stories and articles and feeling helpless myself, even though I'm not directly involved. But I am a programmer, and we're supposed to have brilliant solutions to these issues....but I can't come up with one. The underlying structure of the 'net itself is to blame for allowing these attacks, and you know to change that will be like getting all cars to convert to bacon fat gas.
How does one instigate a major industry shift in how we do things? Would it even be worth it, or will we just see these random business fold due to stupid fucking kiddies?
One ISP is punished for another ISP's mistakes... (Score:3, Interesting)
ISP's don't do this, because either they don't understand it's a problem, or they don't know how, or their poor NAS boxes would collapse if they were asked to filter the traffic, instead of just forwarding it.
Anonymity vs. Accountability (Score:3, Interesting)
There isn't much for accountability when it comes to the net and everyone knows this. Lawmakers are doing very little about SPAM and it's a form of DoS but people cry afoul when some kids were pissed off at someone on IRC and DoS multiple large networks.
If people aren't required to be accountable for ALL of their actions then this isn't going to stop anytime soon. Unfortunately it's not hard to get access to connections with a lot of bandwidth so it's easy to pound anyone into oblivion.
I don't know what the solution is but as more companies get DoS'ed while their livelyhood depends on the net, you'll see more being done.
My question is if it costs companies so much to deal with SPAM, why isn't more being done? Isn't this a similar issue?
Register coverage (Score:5, Informative)
Same thing happened to me (Score:3, Interesting)
I have moved on to a better ISP that actually filters attacks leaving and entering the network.
Dos for weeks (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that the Internet has shown to be a useful medium and is rapidly becoming an utility, it's time to make it more secure and robust against DDos attacks. The technology exist already, the telco's need to take the initiative and make it happen. From this document [ietf.org] on ietf.org site:
7. Security consideration
Any public proxy is inherently a source of DOS attack. Rate limiting packet emission as suggested in 3.5 is expected to lower the risks.
Why hasn't this been solved? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why did no one do this? It requires changes to router firmware, I'm not sure about Cisco firmware upgrades, but I thought they were at least possible. Besides, they could use this as a selling point and declare their old routers obsolete.
Admittedly, the model breaks down under MPLS, since it is difficult to track the cloud, but you can at least track entrance and exit points from the cloud.
Calling it "terrorism" (Score:3, Interesting)
From that article:
Speaking to The Register a dejected Mr Miszti said: "This is terrorism - pure and simple. I never want to relive the last seven days again.
You're thinking "terrorism? yeah right".
It's too bad (for them) they're in the UK... in the U.S., under the so-called "Patriot Act" this IS in fact terrorism. Read for yourself here [eff.org].
Obstruction? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the UK, the Computer Misuse act is such a catchall, it would be easy to claim damages (less easy to collect though).
Slashdot is known for having a DOS effect, but at least it is people attempting to view a site for its content. Its tough if you pay your hosting company for bandwidth but, at least it's legitimate and its is coming from a lot of users.
The trouble is, so does a distributed DOS. This has a lot of unwitting users too. It is extremely difficult to trace who is giving the orders and the actual attack 'bots run on any suitably unprotected system that happens to have conveniant broadband access to the web. Even the Whitehouse was hit, liuckily the attack 'bot was dumb and a quick switch to a backup IP address solved the problem.
The only solution that I know is to use a private network (as done by several securities exchanges). You can block out all of an exchange's internet access, but you will not hit the private network. Users without a private network connection can fall back to switched circuit connections (i.e., ISDN) when the Internet is down.
Re:Obstruction? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would make such an annoucement (Score:4, Funny)
(Read the final paragraphs of the announcement. Why do they stress that they are solvent?)
Simple filtering should stop this? (Score:3, Insightful)
I could be a little out of date (maybe even a lot ;) ), but last time I checked you could do a lot of calming of DoSing by implementing proper packet filtering on routers.
IIRC most DoSing relies on the kiddie hiding their source address (so that they can't be traced). So ensure that the router closest to the kiddie knows all the IPs it is allowed to accept, and rejects (and logs) all others.
This puts an onus on ISPs to handle the situation. Any ISP which doesn't react immediately to a DoSer from it or a downstream stands to lose (all of) its uplink(s).
Most port handling equipment can handle quite complex filtering on its own, knowing the IP allocated to a port and filtering all packets without that as its source. Port handlers typically forward to a router anyway, so its easy for an ISP to say "that interface talks to that rack, which can use IP range X to Y, so filter everything else". Immediately your script kiddie is limited to faking addresses of other users in the range.
This screws up a number of DDoS attacks I know of (where the reply to an unwitting host causes shit for the replier), and makes it a lot easier to trace the kiddie at least to within a limited number of possibilities.
If the ISP supplies a link to another ISP it must ensure it toes the line. Bulk links to corporate customers or anyone with a range of IPs (rather than just one) at the other end of the link can usually be handled like dial-ups: port handlers filter out bad source IPs.
Does anyone know of technical and/or political reasons why this can't work? If there are no technical problems then maybe an IETF policy committee needs to make it a standards issue.
Kill the martians! (Score:4, Informative)
*All* of my servers block all traffic to/from private IPs - except subnets they know - and block outbound traffic not from an externally visible IP that they own; they've done this for years, it's a fairly simple set of ipchains/iptables rules. The 2.4 kernels have a heap more options such as automatic martian (alien packet, ``it can't have come from there'') assassination.
Oh, and they complain in the logs, which are monitored. They also use tools like portsentry to temporarily block all traffic from IPs that sniff them.
And they all stay updated (thanks Mandrake, even if it's not quite as simple as Debian).
These things are all easy under Linux, presumably most BSDs, and probably not that difficult under Solaris, HP-UX, OS/X et al. But Windows? Hmmm...
Shortlist of private IP subnets to drop: 0.0.0.0/8 10.0.0.0/8 127.0.0.0/8 172.16.0.0/12 192.168.0.0/16 169.127.0.0/16; there are a few others you could use as well.
Do a traceroute 192.168.99.99 from your box (try a few other private IPs as well) and see what happens. From here, RadioWAN don't filter, EfTel don't filter, Paradox don't filter, and AlterNet only drop private IPs after a few hops into their LAN (hey, at least they don't route it!), which is all very sad from a bullshit-deterring POV.
Slave to our own inadequate design? (Score:4, Interesting)
With all the designs available to us today, as engineers, we should be able to employ traffic shaping devices to limit the amount of load any given site can generate on the net. Cache, throttle and filter. We build routers that can switch ungodly amounts of packets per second (obviously enough to flood the link to Cloud 9's boxes.
So why can't Cloud 9 invest in a few black box traffic shapers (I know they exist) to smooth out the requests?
Just where is the point of failure, anyway?
As long as we continue to design our edge devices to be layover victims, we'll always have these problems. The network delivers, the computer abides. Well, perhaps the computer shouldn't be so quick to respond.
-b-
Re:This can't be the whole story... (Score:5, Funny)
Knock on their door (Score:5, Funny)
Kinda funny actually, poorly done, we tracked down who it was, Unknown to the dimwit on his dads T1 (at home his dad was playing hosting provider) The admin at his upstream was a friend of mice accross town, I called paul up and said hey what you trying to pull here, he chuckeled and said I know, I know, I just saw the traffic, you wanna know who it is, you want me to cut him off ?, I said nah, leave him up, I dont want him to know I know, My friend kindly gave me his name and address,
I showed up at around 3:30 since I figured it was they guys kid, and he should be out of school by then, I took a friend(witness along) I didnt want this punk saying I beat him up or anything. I had a cell phone in one hand and rang the bell with th other, he came to the door and I said, right now the Police number is on this phone, I am good friends with a detective there(true) now, you either pull the plug on your end or I press send and well see how long it takes for them to come and pull the plug permanetly, although I dont think you dad would be real happy, I thought this kid was going to wet his pants, Ive only seen somebody so scared a few times, he fell back over a chair in the foyer and took off ? I looked at my friend and it was all we could do to keep a srtaiht face.
He came back 20 seconds later and said its off, and the n stared to enquire about if I was going to tell his dad, I said no but Im sure the bill from your provider will, He was on a transfer pricing plan and this had been going on over 2 weeks while I was on vacation.
I have "Knoked on doors" twive one was a 2 hour drive but I had other business in that area , most certainly the most effective DOS stoppages Ive ever had.
Maybe we should form an allicance of Administrators geographically dispersed to start knocking on their doors, sort of an Administrators Militia , you knock on his in BFI and Ill knock for you when you need it. Police scare the shit out of most of these script kiddies, probably more the fear of knowing being arrested is not something easy to hide from the parents that pay for their computers and bandwidth.
Hold on there... (Score:3, Insightful)
No technical solution, it's an apathy thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that sysadmins see the scans from these kiddies and ignore them (those that even have a portsentry or similar application in place). If you saw someone walking around your house and trying the doors and windows, you'd call the police right away, wouldn't you?
So why do the kiddies get off free? Sheer apathy from most of the sysadmins in the world.
When you get scanned, you have the address (if it's not spoofed), you can send a mail to abuse@domain. But most people don't, because It's too much hassle or we can't be bothered or no harm was done.
Script Kiddies will have a far harder time when admins start practising zero tolerance.
Re:No technical solution, it's an apathy thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, for a while I thought this would be a good idea. First, I set up MySQL with a DB and some tables to store information on portscans. Then, I downloaded portsentry, and hacked it slightly to make entries in the database whenever I was scanned. Then, I wrote some PHP to let me look at the results via a webpage.
The result? I have learned that I'm scanned anywhere from 3 to 50 times per day, from all over the world. I tried emailing abuse@... as you suggest, many many times, with no results.
Now, I have learned some interesting things by doing this:
- Most scans are on ports 21 (ftp) or 23 (telnet). It's hard to prosecute someone, or even get them in trouble with their ISP, simply for trying to ftp to you.
- Most scanners are scanning from hacked accounts. ISPs are unwilling to shut down these accounts for lack of proof, and to avoid pissing off a customer.
- All the scanners are quite easily blocked by portsentry.
I no longer try to do jack sh*t about portscanners. My pleas have gone unanswered, and I simply don't care anymore. Once I have a true firewall, I'll care even less. Let them scan me.This will never stop until ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Computer vandalism -- This will not decrease until we (as the technical community -- including management) decide to make some changes. Without changes, it will only get worse.
1) Although technological solutions are useful and necessary, they are not enough. The trusted network model does not work in the real world. There must be rules, accountabilty and penalties (without penalties, nothing stops me from continuing to break the rules).
2) Many network rules exist, some are poorly enforced.
3) Because of packet-spoofing. Some (D)DOS attacks can be nearly impossible to shutdown. We need to make sure only legitimate packets can Internet at large. Without this rule, tracking down the vandal and applying the penalty is not practical. If packet spoofing were eliminated, it would be possible to identify culprits at a modest cost.
4) Accoutability needs to be improved by everybody. If Nimba2002 is released tomorrow, Microsoft should be expected to make it well known, and supply a fix. Network servers should be patched. People running compromised server should be cut-off until they get fixed. These things happen by and large in a haphazard fashion today. The problem needs to be addressed at the source whenever possible.
4) Penalties need to be commensurate with violation. A hand-slap for vandalism does not deter, a death-sentence for jaywalking deters, but it not justice either.
5) Then maybe we should get rid of junk email for an encore.
Egress filtering and ISP responsibility (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the day, before the Internet went commercial, if you abused your connection your upstream provider (typically a bunch of long-hairs at a land-grant university) would cut you off. If they didn't do it, their upstream provider would cut them off.
Currently, there is no real penalty for large ISPs who do not implement egress filtering (which prevents IP source spoofing) and/or refuse to co-operate in tracking down DOS sources.
The anti-spam vigilantes have been partially effective in cutting off ISP service to the worst spammers; perhaps something similar is needed to influence the ISPs who refuse to implement egress filters.
--Charlie
Wouldn't want to be the script kiddie who did this (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it: you've just brought down a major ISP, sent their sysadmins to the unemployment lines, and now they have plenty of time on their hands, probably have copies of all the logs, and nothing better to do than go through them with a fine tooth comb to find who messed up their lives.
Nosiree, I would not want to be in those script kiddie shoes. Not that I'm saying the sysadmins would stoop to anything illegal, but there's lots they can do legally if they find out who's behind the attack.
Reason for going out of business. (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a new sheriff in town (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not the first time! (Score:5, Funny)
Martial Law. . ? (Score:4, Insightful)
For one section, they had cameras sit in on a bunch of young military techies studying the logistics of combating a huge hack-attack; like nuclear power plants being shut down or hacked into danger zones. Airlines losing planes. That kind of thing.
I've been pondering just how exactly the developed nations could be whammied into a state of martial law. The current world situation doesn't have enough momentum to actually put thousands of Americans in prison camps. And the forces which drove the Nazis just aren't there. ("We are descendants of superior Aryans from space!" -No joke.) People today, while easily manipulated, haven't been sold that kind of propaganda, but it remains quite clear that a form of undeclared fascism (That is, "freedom", so long as you eat shit, breath shit, think shit, absorb shit media, and work too hard, and don't mind being overseen by Shirow-style O.R.C.S. with machine gunes, in order that you be reduced to the position of Zombie-like Serfdom), this it seems to me, will be the natural conclusion given the forces of greed and corporate evil moving in the world today.
Choice means that people might not buy your product. Remove choice, while maintaining the illusion of a free society, and bingo! You have the perfect consumer; driven because s/he still believes in the American Dream, but a serf nonetheless, whose task it is to pour wealth into the coffers of the powerful. And to be miserable for those who eat misery. . .
Anyway, it was interesting; the documentary basically said the following:
One military analyst basically said, with a straight & serious face, that in the event of a huge digital attack, "Declare martial law. Shut everybody down and take control of the situation. That'd be my recommendation."
Hmmm.
I don't know how true the above is, but the fact that it was being sold by a respected authority voice, indicates that they're trying to soften people up for just such a turn of events.
-Fantastic Lad
Does this seem suspicious? (Score:3, Interesting)
Other than saving face, ("Hackers did it" vs. "unchecked spending did it"), is there any practical advantage to claiming that evil hackers destroyed the business. Something just doesn't add up.
Not fixing DDoS problems a tool for big business? (Score:5, Interesting)
My small ISP which had been doing okay had been stranded without an uplink after a 150Mbit attack took out sprint links in our part of
After the attack we were quick to contact the NOC of a few schools with unused 'open' blocks who refused to claim responsibility (of the DDoS packets) or fix the problem. About a month and a half later they had FBI knocking on their door after the ebay/yahoo etc attacks.
The question --
Do you think DDoS could be a tool for the bigger ISP's and players to squeeze smaller guys (ISP/ASP) out of business? I know that one quite is a stretch.
What other reasons have kept ``Tier-1'' networks from implementing fixes?
DoS my arse (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's start with the awful customer service, unreliable connections, awful customer service, immoral and possibly illegal business practices, awful customer service and awful customer service.
Her firm had a problem with the mail relay, it's only a small firm and they'd left the relay open and some spammers had found it. Cloud 9 terminated their connection without notice of any kind, and when finally they found a human being to talk to (they like to do their tech support by fax) they basically tried to blackmail her firm into handing over control of their domain, hosting etc etc to Cloud 9 before they'd reinstate the service. Needless to say, they got dumped very quickly indeed and went to Demon.
Frankly they're a shitty outfit and they've got their just rewards.
A small ISP's viewpoint. (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously though, I could care less about the proliferation of DoS/DDoS tools. What bothers me is that the ISPs where this crap is coming from have never been blackholed by the rest of the community. It's not THAT hard to implement a widespread policy of filtering source packets, and that cuts down on a LOT of the methods used by the skript kiddiez.
The pathetic part about it all is it was already a problem in '95, and source-filtering was strongly recommended then. Soon after, no ip directed broadcast became also strongly recommended. Sadly, I can still get a 250:1 return on a forged ICMP ping (thankfully, their outgoing bandwidth is only a T1)
The real culprits are the people too lazy or inept to be allowed to run a network.
--Dan
Use Honey pots (Score:3, Interesting)
After collecting evidence, the perpetrator should be fined and prosecuted. It would likely cost nothing to the tax payers since it could fund itself from the fines imposed on the perpetrators. If it's just a kid, then hold the parents responsible.
Re:I'd like to know (Score:5, Informative)
The slashdot effect has been analyzed:
Traffic increase from slashdot effect [tweakers.net]
Increase in hits and bandwith requirements of a Linux related story being featured on Slashdot [dotat.org]
Analysis of several stories making it to the frontpage of Slashdot and other newslogs. [bnl.gov]
Especially the second link shows that the Slashdot effect can look very much like a DDoS attack. The severance depends on the story, probably on the time of day and of course on the link and hardware powering the /.ed site.
If you pay by the gigabyte for your webtraffic (who doesn't), the /. effect can be a financial DoS attack much more than a technical DoS.