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GitHub is getting DDoSed again

status.github.com

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Re: GitHub is getting DDoSed again

#6

This happened back in October a couple of days in a row. Who the heck is targeting Github and why? I wonder if these attacks are related to the Chinese hacking attacks that have been publicised lately?

Hm, I don't think it fits the pattern. The most reported Chinese hacking was about espionage, not bringing down websites. Most of the time, DDOS is either related to politics (newspapers, federal agencies etc.) or related to blackmailing (most likely in the case of GitHub. This of course, does not mean that the hacker is NOT sitting in China. But she could be placed everywhere else just as likely.

Re: GitHub is getting DDoSed again

#8

This happened back in October a couple of days in a row. Who the heck is targeting Github and why? I wonder if these attacks are related to the Chinese hacking attacks that have been publicised lately?

Nowadays it's so easy to execute a large scale ddos that it's just as likely to be an attention starved teenager as it is a group with an agenda. Github is big enough that it's on peoples radars as "that popular website lots of people rely on", the company I work for has websites smaller than Github and we're indiscriminately ddosed every couple of days.

Re: GitHub is getting DDoSed again

#9

This happened back in October a couple of days in a row. Who the heck is targeting Github and why? I wonder if these attacks are related to the Chinese hacking attacks that have been publicised lately?

I often have to wonder if the DDoS gods roll a dice and pick someone to screw each day. We have had many DDoS attacks and never once had any indication as to why.

A few days ago we had a 30 Gbit DDoS. Our server host just blackholed any IP that was touched by it. They kept moving it around to target different bits of our infrastructure (unlike previous attacks that just targeted our website).

We lost 6 servers, but thankfully not enough to take us fully offline though some customers would have experienced problems during that time.

If they had just been a bit more persistent we might have been in serious trouble.

At that level of DDoS your server host doesn't care about keeping you online. They want the traffic off their network.

Re: GitHub is getting DDoSed again

#10
post #5

This is a pretty typical occurrence for a web service provider of their size. When is Github going to be able to not fail when targeted?

Questions in case of Github remain: Who and why Its not like DDoSing a target of this size is totally 'free'.
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