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A method to use Google for DDoS. Bug or Not?

chr13.com

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Re: A method to use Google for DDoS. Bug or Not?

#51
post #44

The other huge problem here is that Google's FeedFetcher doesn't respect robots.txt. (Their reasoning is that it is acting at the direct request of a human to retrieve a specific resource, so it doesn't count as a bot.) Because of this, there is no easy way to stop it from hitting your site.

You can block the user agent, I believe "Feedfetcher-google" should work.

True, but (while possible) it's not straightforward to block access to specific files only. The same user agent is also used for Google Custom Search if you're using that. And it's still going to be hammering your firewall (although admittedly that's less catastrophic than trying to download a 10MB file repeatedly).

Re: A method to use Google for DDoS. Bug or Not?

#52

Doesn't Facebook do something similar for preview links in chat and/or wall posts? You're probably limited by the number of messages/posts, but I wonder if that could be exploited with n number of fb accounts.

Yes, the same to Twitter. When you paste any links into your tweets, a Tweet Bot will crawl the link to show preview information.

Re: A method to use Google for DDoS. Bug or Not?

#53
post #42

DaaS - DDOS as a service :)

DDOS as a Service has been around for years, the difference is that Google is trying to muscle in and undercut the competition with a free service. Unlike the extant players their customer service is nonexistent, so I'm sure the big DaaS companies won't lose too much business...

Imagine the DDOS providers filing an antitrust case against google :P
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