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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'

#151

Post by lazyjones »

npsimons wrote: post #145
tomjen3 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not censorship; it's simple property rights and basic freedom. I don't consent to someone else using bandwidth that I have paid for, space on my hard disk, or my attention and time, for advertising. Hosting is cheap enough; they can get their own damn website and opt-in mailing list. And spamhaus subscriptions are completely voluntary and optional. That being said, the problem with many BL's is that they are run…

> That being said, the problem with many BL's is that they are run by incompetents or extremists.

Unfortunately, that includes Spamhaus.

It's a bit sad to see how many companies will blindly support such entities because they've "heard" that they somehow help fight spam. As someone who's had issues with them because of their badly configured hosts and shady practices (e.g. using domains previously used by mail providers as "spam honeypots", meaning anyone who emails someone with an old address can be banned [all content mailed there is considered spam, regardless of what it actually is]), I am disappointed (yes, looking at you cloudflare).

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

#152

Post by derefr »

jholman wrote: post #142
tomjen3 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's a philosophically vexed question. AIUI, as mhurron says, what Spamhaus does is publish a list. The nominal purpose of that list is to identify spammers, so that people who wish to filter out spam can be assisted by that. People do, in fact, use that list, to filter email. The email recipient wants to be protected from spam, so the recipient's ISP attempts to perform that service, and Spamhaus contributes an op…

I think, basically, Spamhaus should be thought of as the Internet's equivalent to a Credit Ratings Agency (S&P, Moody's, Fitch, et al.)

In CRAs' own opinions, they are practicing "free speech" and giving what amounts to "numeric editorials on the quality of companies." In critics' opinions, large corporations and sometimes governments are relying on these "editorials", so CRAs' abilities to say whatever-the-heck-they-want should be regulated.

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

#153

Post by lazyjones »

Nux wrote: post #144

RBLs are a bad idea, they often end up in abuse. To this day - with v4 exhausted and despite numerous delisting attempts - I have a /21 listed in Sorbs because it happened to be in the past part of an ISP's /18 dynamic range for customers. They deserve all that's coming to them and more. Too bad other's get affected in the process.

> RBLs are a bad idea, they often end up in abuse.

Indeed, all they should be used for is perhaps 0.5 points worth of spamassassin weight. Sysadmins who use spamhaus as a blacklist are just as incompetent as those who bounce virus e-mails to the address in "From:" ...

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

#154

Post by Nux »

lazyjones wrote: post #153
Nux wrote: post #144

RBLs are a bad idea, they often end up in abuse. To this day - with v4 exhausted and despite numerous delisting attempts - I have a /21 listed in Sorbs because it happened to be in the past part of an ISP's /18 dynamic range for customers. They deserve all that's coming to them and more. Too bad other's get affected in the process.

> RBLs are a bad idea, they often end up in abuse. Indeed, all they should be used for is perhaps 0.5 points worth of spamassassin weight. Sysadmins who use spamhaus as a blacklist are just as incompetent as those who bounce virus e-mails to the address in "From:" ...

Hehe, true. It takes 2 ...

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

#155

Post by ck2 »

tomjen3 wrote: post #139
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, excessiv…

Bunker busters are not nuclear. They use turrets from tanks made of depleted uranium which is unbelievably strong - dropped from altitude to piece just about any underground dwelling and deliver a non-nuclear bomb.

I have no idea how I know or remember this, I must have read it somewhere but I am very anti-war, so why I know it is strange to me.

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

#156

Post by vidarh »

driverdan wrote: post #81
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.

Yes. We switched a client off CloudFlare temporarily because London was performing badly.

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

#157

Post by vidarh »

jobigoud wrote: post #19

"In this case, Spamhaus's Domain Name System (DNS) servers were targeted" I'm not sure to understand why this should slow down the whole internet. It seems to be only for email filtering, not for the web, and only those ISP that use their service should be impacted, and only when their DNS cache is not triggered. Am I missing something ?

The claimed slowdowns would be due to congestion on core routers due to the sheer scale of the attack, not anything to do with Spamhaus itself.

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

#159

Post by jholman »

derefr wrote: post #152
jholman wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a philosophically vexed question. AIUI, as mhurron says, what Spamhaus does is publish a list. The nominal purpose of that list is to identify spammers, so that people who wish to filter out spam can be assisted by that. People do, in fact, use that list, to filter email. The email recipient wants to be protected from spam, so the recipient's ISP attempts to perform that service, and Spamhaus contributes an op…

I think, basically, Spamhaus should be thought of as the Internet's equivalent to a Credit Ratings Agency (S&P, Moody's, Fitch, et al.) In CRAs' own opinions, they are practicing "free speech" and giving what amounts to "numeric editorials on the quality of companies." In critics' opinions, large corporations and sometimes governments are relying on these "editorials", so CRAs' abilities to say whatever-the-heck-they…

I think CRAs are a perfect analogy, yeah.
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