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Last week, several major eCommerce sites in Switzerland were targetted by DDoS attacks (German). As far as I have been able to discover, no one knows who was behind the attacks[*]. One might have thought the attackers would identify themselves and demand ransom to stop the attacks, but apparently not. Anyhow, I should hope that no company would be stupid enough to pay, since that would just put them on the list of "suckers" to be targetted again.
This past weekend, it was Swedish government sites, among others.
Today, I have come across two sites that I cannot reach: dilbert.com and an EU governmental site about a minor software project. Dilbert is definitely the target of a DDoS attack; I cannot confirm this for the .eu site, but it seems likely.
Here are a few random thoughts from a non-expert:
- Why would anyone bother with attacks, without claiming credit or demanding ransom? The same reason kids throw rocks through windows? Showing off capability for potential paying customers? Something else?
- If the second (demonstrating capability), isn't this stupid? They've provided ample motivation to disable these attacks, or at least seriously filter them, thus reducing their impact in the future attacks.
- The current DDoS attacks are apparently NTP-reflection attacks (send spoofed queries to vulnerable NTP servers, which then reply to the victim), and similar DNS-based attacks. Is it possible to eliminate these attack vectors, just as Poodle and Heartbleed have been largely eliminated? I.e., issue patches, offer free tests, even blacklist noncompliant servers? Or are the affected protocols so broken that this is not possible?
The whole situation is strange - it seems like there are a lot of missing pieces to the puzzle. I'd be interested in hearing opinions from other Soylentils - what do you think?
[* My German is rusty, but the first-linked story references the "Armada Collective". -Ed.]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by dyingtolive on Tuesday March 22 2016, @04:51AM
That one might be politically motivated and unrelated, given how much of a obviously-in-the-closet a Trump supporter Scott Adams is.
I can't claim for sure, but mere mention of Trump seems to draw the vicious out of their holes.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday March 22 2016, @05:32AM
mere mention of Trump seems to draw the vicious out of their holes.
But why would Scott Adams DOS himself?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2016, @05:39AM
Where's the proof his site was every DOSed? It loads just fine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2016, @06:01AM
I think this is the relevant part of the FA:
Here are a few random thoughts from a non-expert:
I, for one, welcome our new random non-experts!!! May the websites they go to never be DOSed!
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday March 22 2016, @06:26AM
I get what you're saying, and I totally agree with your joke. I have no love for Trump and the more I read from Adams, the more I feel I wouldn't like him if I knew him. That being said, violence at his events and protests are probably only fueling him, if anything at all, regardless of their source. Honestly, I'd say it's as plausible as anything that nutcases on either side of the fence are actually responsible for said violence at this point. People are being exceptionally irrational at this point in time, and it wouldn't surprise me, if his site were indeed a target for something like that, that it would be a target for that reason.
At this point, I have equal parts assumption that the person who modded me flamebait is a angry Trump supporter as much as I assume that it's an angry person on "the other side" who's automatically suspecting I'm some kind of modern-era Nazi.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Funny) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday March 22 2016, @06:27AM
But why would Scott Adams DOS himself?
uhm, maybe he couldn't find a cp/m disk?
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday March 22 2016, @08:04AM
But why would Scott Adams DOS himself?
uhm, maybe he couldn't find a cp/m disk?
Very funny! No, really, actually very funny! But in defense of my question, if it was just Adams attacking himself, it could hardly be a Distributed Denial of Service attack, could it? Or only if he was very determined.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2016, @02:05PM
There were a bunch of upvoted comments linking dilbert comics on slashdot yesterday. Isn't it possible the site was DDOS'd, but it wasn't maliciously done?
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday March 22 2016, @02:55PM
He's not in the closet about it at all. He's said a bunch of times that he thinks Trump would be the best president, and that saying anything to make that happen is something he would do.
Which is too bad. Because his blog used to have non-Trump news on it.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday March 22 2016, @03:24PM
I recall he claimed he doesn't endorse or support Trump in other blog posts, or at least did early on. Maybe he's given up on it now. I usually didn't agree with his older stuff, but I appreciated that it was a starkly different point of view. It's just tiring to read it now.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday March 22 2016, @05:08PM
He claimed that he did not endorse or support Trump, while writing blog posts:
A) About how much more convincing he is if he claims not to endorse or support Trump.
B) About what a great president Trump would be
C) About how Trump is going to win in a landslide
All while mocking people who dislike Trump.