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Basecamp was under network attack

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Re: Basecamp was under network attack

#181

Post by grey-area »

PeterisP wrote: post #159
grey-area wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could post more, but why bother? The krebs story was interesting thanks, the forum posts less so. I understand why cloudflare are reluctant to start rejecting customers based on content, but surely it's illegal to sell DDOS services? Perhaps they should change their TOS to exclude any sites which sell attack tools/services, because it looks really bad for them to be protecting sites that promote DDOS, which then pr…

Sell service of running a DDoS for you? Probably illegal. Selling attack tools, however, is explicitly legal in most places, it's just software just as a port-scanning tool, DeCSS or zero-day vulnerability data. "Promoting this sort of activity" again is free speech issue, no matter what "that sort" is. For example, there are posts right here in HN that "promote this sort of activity", and it would be ridiculous if h…

Sorry, promote was a poor choice of words, I meant offer illegal services, not just talking about it or promoting it. I believe DDOS is illegal in many jurisdictions, and offering it for money more so. The allegation in the krebs article is:

a great many of today’s DDoS attacks are being launched or coordinated by the same individuals who are running DDoS-for-hire services (a.k.a “booters”) which are hiding behind Cloudflare’s own free cloud protection services.

I don't see Matthew Prince's post quoted above as a satisfactory response to this. This is morally and legally shady because cloudflare directly profit from the continued existence of DDOS, so they should be very careful to offer not a shred of evidence that they currently support people who carry out DDOS IMO, it would just be good business and current customers are going to get restless if they find cloudflare protects DDOS sites knowingly.

They've obviously taken a different stance (based on not wanting to filter customers on content), which I'm sympathetic to, but if the content is illegal and directly benefits them by facilitating more DDOS attacks, that equation changes.

Re: Basecamp was under network attack

#182

Post by ksk »

josefresco wrote: post #162
ksk wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if a pizza delivery guy gets shot on the way do you still demand better service? Just trying to see if you believe in the principle or just the practical aspect. :)

Better analogy would be if the "criminals" flooded the streets with bicycles or cars preventing the pizza delivery guy from delivering your order. Straight up murder doesn't quite fit the situation here.

Yes, that would be a better analogy. However, I was not trying to make an analogy. I was testing if the person held a principled (absolute) or practical (relative) view.

Re: Basecamp was under network attack

#184

Post by yardie »

cordite wrote: post #68
TacticalCoder wrote: post #51

I take it at one point people will start to believe that I work for OVH (I really don't) but... OVH has a mandatory DDoS protection on all its dedicated servers: fees have been slightly raised to take that mandatory protection into account. There are a few gotchas, including if I understand it correctly the need to "retry twice" when you try to SSH in your server when a DDoS is going on but... OVH doesn't even feel a…

I have a service on OVH myself. Though a friend at another related service had been kicked from two VPS providers due to receiving a few DDoS attacks. These providers claimed it was against their Terms of Service and ejected him as a customer. That day he learned it is best to keep offsite-cross-company backups of everything, since he did not get a single byte from his machines.

Who are these providers that just delete client data? I run a small datacenter for our niche of clients and when the contract terminates or the project is finished I box up all their data and fire it off to S3.

Storage is so cheap these days there is no excuse not to keep client data for at least a month.

Re: Basecamp was under network attack

#186

Post by mobiplayer »

ivanca wrote: post #120
Nacraile wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but I've seen this discussion come up multiple times, and the problem is that the counterattack would technically be illegal. The fact that somebody else has already broken the law in order to compromise an innocent bystander does not give anybody else the right to do the same thing. Vigilantism is as illegal on the internet as it is in the real world. This is a huge constraint for the people (e.g. at Microsof…

But this could be considered self-defense which is granted by most law systems.

This is like someone hitting you with someone else's arm while they're sleeping (attackers use compromised hosts/networks) and then you go back and burn the sleepy guy.

That doesn't sound like self-defense at all :)

Re: Basecamp was under network attack

#188

Post by joshdance »

pdeuchler wrote: post #72
swanson wrote: post #5

Some great language there: framing it as an attack by criminals (gains sympathy from users), explains in plain-terms what a DDOS is (front door analogy), emphasizes (twice!) that user data is safe, apologizes for the likely downtime, informs people where to get updates. Probably worth bookmarking this for when you [hopefully never] have to deal with this same situation.

I'm going to play devil's advocate and completely disagree with you here :) Customers, especially non-technical ones, don't give a crap. What they want to know is when the service will be back up, and what steps you're taking to prevent it happening in the future, although I'm sure a certain percentage would be interested in why this is happening in the first place (not as in the technical breakdown, but why you didn…

Some customers don't care. Many do. I personally do. When a business can explain what happened it makes me not only like them more, but become a little more loyal.

Re: Basecamp was under network attack

#189

Post by josefresco »

ksk wrote: post #182
josefresco wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better analogy would be if the "criminals" flooded the streets with bicycles or cars preventing the pizza delivery guy from delivering your order. Straight up murder doesn't quite fit the situation here.

Yes, that would be a better analogy. However, I was not trying to make an analogy. I was testing if the person held a principled (absolute) or practical (relative) view.

I'm guessing relative.

Re: Basecamp was under network attack

#190

Post by ivanca »

mobiplayer wrote: post #186
ivanca wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this could be considered self-defense which is granted by most law systems.

This is like someone hitting you with someone else's arm while they're sleeping (attackers use compromised hosts/networks) and then you go back and burn the sleepy guy. That doesn't sound like self-defense at all :)

That's probably the worst analogy I have ever heard; or is this killing with someone else hand something common... somewhere?
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