Are we really this helpless? (Re: isprime DOS in progress)

Sat Jan 24 03:50:09 UTC 2009

On Jan 23, 2009, at 10:31 PM, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:33:14 PST, Seth Mattinen said:
>
>> Back to my original question: is there really not a better solution?
>
> Well, we *could* hunt down the perpetrators, pool some $$, and hire  
> 3 or 4
> baseball-bat wielding professional explainers to go explain our  
> position to
> them.  Figuring out how to do so without breaking any laws is the  
> tough part..

The Cameros or SUVs and baseball bats  are normally not in sync with  
local legal traditions, depending on your local legal statutes. A  
certain ISP in California, however, seems to have learned a more  
subtle lesson, perhaps with left more satisfying results. And while I  
don't think that is any serious fix, I also think that there might  
well be a deterrence effect, to whatever extent that works - it might  
not kill a system, but it can provide deterrence. Hell, I expect the  
perpetrator for this attack to be on this list. So it becomes more  
more step on the arms race.