Over a decade of DDOS--any progress yet?

Wed Dec 8 11:13:39 UTC 2010

On Dec 8, 2010, at 5:58 PM, <bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com> wrote:

> actually, botnets are an artifact.  claiming that the tool is the problem might be a bit short sighted.  with the evolution of Internet technologies
> (IoT) i suspect botnet-like structures to become much more prevelent and useful for things other than coordinated attacks.

I'm a big advocate of distributed/agile computing models with swarming/flocking behaviors - see slide 32 of this preso for an example:

<https://files.me.com/roland.dobbins/c07vk1>

When these things are harnessed together in order to launch DDoS attacks and steal financial information and intellectual property and so forth, we call them 'botnets'.  They're a force-multiplier which allow the attacker to avoid the von Clausewitzian friction of conflict, and which give him a comfortable degree of anonymity, not to mention highly asymmetrical force projection capabilities and global presence.

'Botnet-like structures' = botnets, for purposes of this discussion.  Semantic hair-splitting.

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Roland Dobbins <rdobbins at arbor.net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

 	       Sell your computer and buy a guitar.