LJ outage followup

[annathepiper]

Turns out that there is a lot more interesting data about what happened to take out LJ night before last. According to this link and this one, the DDOS attack was actually originally directed at a company called Blue Security--which then redirected its main domain name to a TypePad blog, which then put Six Apart and all of its sites in the line of fire. Including LJ. For added giggles and grins, it seems that the Blue Security folks are themselves considered controversial. A PC World article about them summarizes what they do, describing something that one can argue is very similar to a DDOS attack.

Now me, I'm all for hitting spammers where it hurts. And I can't exactly object to the idea that if your site is under DDOS attack, you should do what you can to get the word out to your users--and a blog is a good place to do that.

But. Redirecting the attack and putting Six Apart and its sites in the line of fire? Not cool.

Wednesday evening miles: 2.4
Thursday morning miles: 1.6
Miles out of Hobbiton: 944.3
Miles out of Rivendell: 486.3
Miles out of Lothlórien: 24.3
Miles to Rauros Falls: 364.7

Comments

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I LOVE the ideas behind Blue Security. I have no problem with that whatsoever. In fact, when I think about it, it really just makes me happy. Spammers are scum and they deserve whatever computer attacks come at them.

I agree, Blue Security should not have have redirected the attack to Six Alive. They should have redirected to the spam site. Okay, that's probably not possible, but wouldn't that have been awesome?

[annathepiper]

The problem with the way DDOS attacks work is that it's not just one site that's doing the attacking--instead, it's a whole slew of slave computers that have all been taken over to go and fling part of the attack at the victim's site, bringing it to its knees and taking it off the net. In order to deflect the attack right back at the spammer, they'd have had to actually trace the attack to the correct computer.

Not impossible, but pretty effing difficult indeed. Though if they actually had that piece of data, they could do way more with it than just knock it off the net with a DDOS attack. Like oh, say, get the beginnings of a lead to sic law enforcement on the actual perpetrators.

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

would *UGH* be appropos?
bb

[annathepiper]

I think so!