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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'

#131

Post by wilfra »

coldtea wrote: post #89
scott_s wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I read the story I also thought it was most likely BS.

They claim that the SWAT team just gave up and went back to their police station and then denied they ever went there. If a SWAT team were executing a search warrant or seeking to arrest people, they would not just decide to drop the case because they couldn't get in.

They also claim to have extensive video of this event but decided not to release any of it because the police gave them 8,000 Euros to repair their fence. That video would be worth orders of magnitude more for PR purposes if they released it.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

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

#132

Post by tomjen3 »

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

I can't even load the webpage -- no warning, just a could not connect.

If this is caused by spamhause then I support the other guys. Censorship is worse than spam.

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

#133

Post by tomjen3 »

Trufa wrote: post #55
dclowd9901 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sounds like the beginning of a series!

You could call it 'When sysadmins ruled the world'.

Then you could have Cory Doctorow write it.

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

#134

Post by tquai »

np422 wrote: post #73
entropy_ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on what happened in your case that you'd be so vehemently opposed to spamhaus(to the point of being willing to commit crime(s) to hurt them)? I'm truly curious on why the reaction to spamhaus being DDoS is so polarised.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away I was a sysadmin at a local university. Trying to keep mail-servers running and keeping up with the different spam clearing houses different policies that kept changing without notice was a lot of work back then. Once you got black-listed getting removed wasn't always an easy process no matter how quickly you tried fix whatever caused it. Methods of communicating were not always a…

Once you got black-listed getting removed wasn't always an easy process no matter how quickly you tried fix whatever caused it.

I took a job in the year 2000, at a company with 3000 email users, listed by Spamhaus. First thing I did was close the open relay they were running. The listing was promptly removed, and the mail queue was back to normal within only a few days. I'm skeptical of your claim. I've never seen a confirmed case of Spamhaus aggression, but I've seen a lot that were disproven, and even more that sound like they were written by miscreants. Like the kind who would advocate DDoS attacks cough.

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

#135

Post by eridius »

tomjen3 wrote: post #130
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...

What I am more interested in is their comment 'spamhaus should not be allowed to decide what goes on the internet'. I abhore censorship. Does Spamhause engage in it?

No.

From what I understand, Spamhaus basically provides lists that identify known spammers, or known spam hosts. These lists are used for things like filtering out spam emails. So Spamhaus is basically saying that Cyberbunker is a host to spammers, and therefore email coming from the Cyberbunker's IP addresses should be treated as spam.

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

#136

Post by eridius »

tomjen3 wrote: post #132
danso wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I can't even load the webpage -- no warning, just a could not connect. If this is caused by spamhause then I support the other guys. Censorship is worse than spam.

I don't think that's caused by Spamhaus. Possibly fallout of the attack? I'm having no problems connecting, although the page doesn't want to finish loading.

Spamhaus identifies spammers. They don't take down websites or block connections.

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

#137

Post by mhurron »

tomjen3 wrote: post #130
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...

What I am more interested in is their comment 'spamhaus should not be allowed to decide what goes on the internet'. I abhore censorship. Does Spamhause engage in it?

In the same way that your spam filtering is censorship or your ad blocker is censorship.

Spamhaus isn't preventing anyone from putting anything anywhere, they provide a service that others can use so they don't have to see it.

This post in no way is a comment on any of Spanhaus' practices which has garnered some criticism.

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

#138

Post by jiggy2011 »

jackalope wrote: post #124
jiggy2011 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar problem and never found out exactly why it happened. The hypothesis I came to was that we weren't using SPF records on the domain associated with our IP address for a long time. Some spammers were taking advantage of this by sending emails from different IP ranges with the From: header spoofed to be from our domain. So Spamhaus blocked our IP address on the grounds that spam filters would also be able…

It's extremely unlikely that spoofed headers or the lack of an SPF record would get you listed on an RBL, especially Spamhaus. I can't guess what happened in your case, but somehow your IP address obtained a bad reputation or was unlucky enough to be in a tainted block. FWIW, the very first thing I do after getting an IP allocation is run an RBL check on it and demand a replacement if it's listed anywhere.

Yes, it was a fairly weak hypothesis. OTOH we got on several RBLs a number of times and managed to get taken off them. Once I added an SPF record it hasn't been a problem since.

Didn't use SPF to begin with because there was a large number of hosts legitimately sending mail for the domain and it was a pain to get all of the IP numbers for various crazy reasons.

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

#139

Post by tomjen3 »

ck2 wrote: post #111

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/technology/internet/online... Cyberbunker brags on its Web site that it has been a frequent target of law enforcement because of its “many controversial customers.” “Dutch authorities and the police have made several attempts to enter the bunker by force,” the site said. “None of these attempts were successful.” If this happened in the USA - the police would never leave - they'd call…

This isn't just any bunker. It is a 5 story cold war bunker, with blast doors designed to take a hit from a freaking 20 megaton bomb at 5 km.

The US may have a bunker buster that can open that thing, but it would kill everybody inside, and possibly around it. I am not quite sure that the US bunker busters of that size are non-nuclear either.

Would the US FBI really drop a nuke to serve a warrent? That seems, excessive and counter productive (as you would destroy whatever it was you wanted).

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