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Global Internet slows after 'biggest attack in history'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Global Internet slows after 'biggest attack in history'

#81

Post by driverdan »

jgrahamc wrote: post #33

This story doesn't mention that Spamhaus is protected by CloudFlare and we took a beating from this attack. At some point I'm hoping the full technical story about how the attack morphed from our infrastructure to Internet infrastructure can be told. Also, http://openresolverproject.org PS Technical details: http://blog.cloudflare.com/the-ddos-that-almost-broke-the-in...

Has this been affecting other CloudFlare clients?

Some of my sites have had short periods of slow response times for the past few days but I assumed it's the crappy host their on. One of my clients on CF hasn't had any issues.

Re: Global Internet slows after 'biggest attack in history'

#82

Post by MacsHeadroom »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #15
jessriedel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If she has Microsoft Security Essentials installed, doesn't run unknown software, and doesn't give out her password, what more could my mother, as a layman, reasonably be expected to do? I understand there are all sorts of complicated steps she could take if she had good intuition about sniffing out bad guys, but she doesn't. Isn't the problem with the crappy software, not her?

The fundamental problem is that bad guys can come up with new attack methods faster than we can educate or produce reliable user friendly software to counter their methods. Even a sophisticated user is just as vulnerable in many cases. If I give personal information to a third party site that I presume to be trustworthy (say a government site) there's no way I can know if someone is going to find SQLi vulnerabilities…

Speaking of such, I just recently accidentally happened across an SQLi vulnerability on a government site containing confidential information of tens of millions of people.

That's just the way the Internet is right now.

Re: Global Internet slows after 'biggest attack in history'

#83

Post by flopunctro »

leethax0r wrote: post #41
bluedino wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be easier to just take a backhoe to the data lines running to the bunker?

Wouldn't it just be easier to, I dunno, unplug something? Or turn something off? Why would you fuck up the lines...

You can't "turn off" that bunker, it has multiple diesel generators and lots of fuel reserves. It also has clean water reserves and air filtering capabilities, so you can't gas the people inside.

Physically cutting its uplink lines would be IMHO the most efficient way to neutralize that datacenter.

Re: Global Internet slows after 'biggest attack in history'

#84

Post by DanBC »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #42
mikeash wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to a convenient nuclear effects calculator I found[1], 20MT at 5km and an optimal burst height will generate over 40psi of overpressure. The fireball itself will reach about 4km in radius. According to another site[2], 20psi is enough to severely damage or destroy heavily built concrete buildings, and the maximum wind speed at 40psi will be greater than the speed of sound. For comparison, 3psi is enough to…

Glad to know in the case of full scale nuclear war, the only survivors will be lunatics and data center admins.

See the short story 'When Sysdmins Ruled the Earth' by Cory Doctorow.

(http://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked...)

Re: Global Internet slows after 'biggest attack in history'

#85

Post by DanBC »

derrida wrote: post #66

Wikipedia seems to suggest that Spamhaus blocked a large chunck of Cyberbunkers IP allocation, when the problem originated with a subset. I suppose given the conditions, Wikipedia is perhaps not to be trusted, but it does make me think less of Spamhaus. In October, 2011, Spamhaus identified CyberBunker as providing hosting for spammers and contacted their upstream provider, A2B, demanding service be cancelled. A2B in…

Still, they're hardly SPEWS.

Re: Global Internet slows after 'biggest attack in history'

#86

Post by phaus »

ihsw wrote: post #56
error54 wrote: post #14

"We can't be brought down." I understand taking pride in your work but isn't bragging like this kind of an invitation for more things like this to happen to Spamhaus?

I was under the impression that their statement was less of a challenge and more of a declaration as such: "We mustn't be brought down."

You are almost certainly mistaken. The statement was followed immediately by the claim that Spamhaus has the largest network of DNS servers in the world.

Re: Global Internet slows after 'biggest attack in history'

#87

Post by TranceMan »

lucb1e wrote: post #72

I'm sorry, but what actually slowed the internet down and was the biggest attack in history? It doesn't even make a dent on the charts of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (ams-ix.net): https://stats.ams-ix.net/cgi-bin/stats/16all?log=totalall;pn... As wel as the daily stats by the way: https://ams-ix.net/technical/statistics Reading on through the article, they continue about Spamhaus. What's that got to do with slowi…

Source? 300gbps would definitely be visible, and I think I remember hearing about something between 60 and 100gbps.

From Cloudflares response [1 - nice graph in blog] ~75Gbps extra traffic was hitting part of their network.

Obliviously there would have been much more traffic floating around and getting dropped by ISPs that have correctly configured their outgoing traffic filters.

Many [not all] ISPs that were affected only have themselves to blame, the 'Internet' didn't slow down - the part that they are responsible for did - and it was their fault....

1. http://blog.cloudflare.com/the-ddos-that-knocked-spamhaus-of...

Re: Global Internet slows after 'biggest attack in history'

#88

Post by blhack »

danso wrote: post #61
xSwag wrote: post #2

Funny story from the Hosting company[1]: "Before the break of dawn on a morning in April, a full SWAT team was sent to execute a search warrant on CyberBunker's property." "It must not have occurred to the officers that the blast doors were designed to withstand a 20 megaton nuclear explosion from close range. When the SWAT team realized that the door was not being opened for them, they throw flashbangs and take othe…

I tried to tweet that link. But I guess SpamHaus's blacklist really works. Twitter gave me this error: Oops! A URL in your Tweet appears to link to a page that has spammy or unsafe content. Learn more

If you wash it through bit.ly, it's fine: http://bit.ly/Xc4RQc

Re: Global Internet slows after 'biggest attack in history'

#89

Post by coldtea »

scott_s wrote: post #20
xSwag wrote: post #2

Funny story from the Hosting company[1]: "Before the break of dawn on a morning in April, a full SWAT team was sent to execute a search warrant on CyberBunker's property." "It must not have occurred to the officers that the blast doors were designed to withstand a 20 megaton nuclear explosion from close range. When the SWAT team realized that the door was not being opened for them, they throw flashbangs and take othe…

I do not accept any of their claims at face value.

Is this the HN equivalent of "fake!" comments in YouTube videos?

You can read that they were "operating from a Cold War era government command bunker that was purpose-built by the military to house sensitive electronic gear".

This makes the story about the SWAT team very believable.

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