DOS in progress ?

Fri Aug 7 00:20:21 UTC 2009

On Aug 6, 2009, at 5:29 PM, Christoph Blecker wrote:

> It looks like there is something more widespread today. I've noticed a
> couple other sites having issues. LiveJournal has confirmed they are
> under attack as well:
> http://community.livejournal.com/lj_maintenance/125027.html
>

This is interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/technology/internet/07twitter.html

Most computer security analysts did not cite a specific source of the  
attack Thursday.

But Bill Woodcock, a research director of the Packet Clearing House, a  
nonprofit technical organization that tracks Internet traffic, said  
Thursday’s attack was an extension of the conflict between Russia and  
Georgia. It was not clear who initiated the attack, he said, but  
likely “one side put up propaganda, the other side figured this out  
and is attacking them.”

Instead of using a botnet, or a network of thousands of malware- 
infected personal computers to flood a site with traffic, Mr. Woodcock  
said this particular attack consisted of a wave of spam e-mail  
messages, which began infiltrating Twitter and other sites at 10:25  
a.m. Eastern time. “It’s a vast increase in traffic that creates the  
denial-of-service,” he said.

YouTube and LiveJournal were also affected, Mr. Woodcock said,  
although “Twitter was definitely hit the hardest.” YouTube said it had  
not noticed any problems with its service.

-----------------

While I certainly trust PCH, I would be curious as to the evidence for  
this.

Regards

Marshall

> Cheers,
> -Christoph
>
> Jorge Amodio wrote:
>> FB flakyness could be related to timeout with Twitter APIs
>>
>> Just reported by the birdhouse:
>>
>> "As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and
>> slowness. This includes timeouts to API clients. We’re working to get
>> back to 100% as quickly as we can."
>>
>
>