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Submission + - How should one dealing with a DDoS attack?

Submitted by TheUnFounded
TheUnFounded writes: A site that I administer was recently "held hostage" for the vast sum of $800. We were contacted by a guy (who was, it turns out, in Lebanon), who told us that he had been asked to perform a DDoS on our site by a competitor, and that they were paying him $600. He then said for $800, he would basically go away. Not a vast sum, but we weren't going to pay just because he said he "could" do something.

Within 5 minutes, our site was down.

The owner of the company negotiated with the guy, and he stopped his attack after receiving $400. A small price to pay to get the site online in our case. But obviously we want to come up with a solution that'll allow us to deal with these kinds of attacks in the future.

While the site was down, I contacted our hosting company, Rackspace. They proceeded to tell me that they have "DDoS mitigation services", but they cost $6,000 if your site is under attack at the time you use the service. Once the attack was over, the price dropped to $1500. (Nice touch there Rackspace, so much for Fanatical support; price gouging at its worst).

So, obviously, I'm looking for alternative solutions for DDoS mitigation. I'm considering CloudFlare (https://www.cloudflare.com/) as an option; does anyone have any other suggestions or thoughts on the matter?

Comment Re:So, sue the developer for the cost he caused. (Score 1) 267

by TheUnFounded (#40945021) Attached to: Wall Street and the Mismanagement of Software
I assume this was tounge-in-cheek, but realistically, we're actually headed that way. Licensing boards for software developers, etc. The problem is, as a software developer, it's much more costly to fix 100% of bugs than it is to fix 98% and not worry about that last 2%. If we held every developer to task for every bug in software, we'd have a whole lot less software written, and what would be written would cost 10x as much.

Comment Re:Sad, actually (Score 5, Insightful) 285

by TheUnFounded (#33615230) Attached to: James Cameron Commissions Submarine To Visit Challenger Deep
On the other hand, it got them there, but didn't do a whole lot of good. From Wikipedia:

"The descent took almost five hours and the two men spent barely twenty minutes on the ocean floor before undertaking the three-hour-and-fifteen-minute ascent. Their early departure from the ocean floor was due to their concern over a crack in the window caused by the intense pressure of their descent, and also because their landing on the sea bed had stirred up a cloud of silt which reduced visibility to zero and showed no sign of settling." So hopefully the new technology will give us a longer, more interesting time at the bottom...
Music

Submission + - Lala Shutting Down (lala.com)

Submitted by TheUnFounded
TheUnFounded writes: The popular music listening site, lala.com, is shutting down. No reason is given, just a description of refunds and credits and that May 31st is the last day. The details are behind a login screen which you have to be a member to get past; unfortunately, no new signups are being accepted. As a result, I've included the entire text below:

"You will be able to access and play all music in your Lala collection through May 31, 2010. Any mp3 songs purchased and downloaded from Lala will continue to play as part of your local music library. You can continue to purchase mp3 songs through May 31st using your wallet balance or other payment methods.

As of today, web songs, wallets, and gift cards are no longer available for purchase on Lala. Uploads have been discontinued, and we are not accepting new users for the service.

Refunds and Credits:

Web songs. In appreciation of your support, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple's iTunes Store.

Wallet balances. If you have an outstanding wallet balance on May 31st, we will also issue you an iTunes Store credit for that amount. If you prefer to have your wallet balance refunded to you via check, you must make that request by May 31st.

Unredeemed Gift Cards. Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st. The gift card amount will be added to your wallet balance, and included as part of your wallet balance refund."

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