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GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack

status.github.com

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Re: GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack

#261

Post by meowface »

rmc wrote: post #259
mckoss wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bully" is rather too weak a label for the perpetrator. This attack is criminal. If carried out by a sovereign nation, perhaps an act of war. We don't allow foreign raiding parties to enter our country to loot private businesses. Neither should we treat this attack as a simple act of "bullying". GitHub should get the full support of federal law enforcement, if not the military.

> We don't allow foreign raiding parties to enter our country to loot private businesses. Really? The US government does just that, by mass spying of telecommunications.

Both are unethical, but there is a difference between spying (sitting with some binoculars by a window, or snooping around inside the building) and destructive actions (blowing up the entrance with a constant stream of TNT so no one else can get in). US does the former, China does both.

Re: GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack

#262

Post by meowface »

vixsomnis wrote: post #178

Interestingly enough, if the attacks never stop (which is a possibility), the engineers at GitHub might still come up with a way to effectively nullify DDOS and continue their normal operations. Which would be a massive advance in cyberdefense. It's unlikely, but it would be a great example of "natural selection" (via their intelligent engineers' efforts) at work. It will no doubt take ingenuity, but I don't think an…

DDoS attacks are a dynamic and changing problem. It's usually like playing whack-a-mole.

There's no way GitHub is going to develop a solution that magically "prevents all DDoS attacks".

Re: GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack

#263

Post by allochthon »

mirashii wrote: post #201
vixsomnis wrote: post #178

Interestingly enough, if the attacks never stop (which is a possibility), the engineers at GitHub might still come up with a way to effectively nullify DDOS and continue their normal operations. Which would be a massive advance in cyberdefense. It's unlikely, but it would be a great example of "natural selection" (via their intelligent engineers' efforts) at work. It will no doubt take ingenuity, but I don't think an…

Nullifying DDOS doesn't take ingenuity, it takes a big wallet, which Github no doubt has, but let's not pretend that its some engineering feat. If it was, a small company being ddosed would have a chance at fending it off all the same, but that's just simply not the case.

> Nullifying DDOS doesn't take ingenuity, it takes a big wallet

The problem in this instance relates not to the absolute size of Github's wallet, but the relative size of its wallet compared to whoever is sponsoring the attack. State-sponsored actors (if that is what is happening here) have many dollars at their disposal.

Re: GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack

#264

Post by rmc »

frabcus wrote: post #256
ionwake wrote: post #5

I'm confused - what is the reason behind it ?

My view - based on no evidence, just reasoning from what we know - is that China are scared of Github. They can't shut it down fully, because doing so would shut down their software engineering capability (it has got that important). And people can host basically anything there, including anti-censorship software. Attack feels like a power play to me. Either to pressurise Github into censoring for the PRC - "block th…

And/or to build a local competitor. The more Github is down, the more it is considered "anti-China" in China, the easier to build a local competitor.

Or even globally. GitHub is, as you say, very important for the IT industry. Maybe China thinks it's too important. Make Github unusable for everyone else in the world and people, even outside China, might start looking elsewhere.

Re: GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack

#265

Post by rmc »

KMag wrote: post #80
mike_hearn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first attack based on the Javascript wasn't actually using Chinese IPs to do the attack. As otherwise it'd indeed be very easy to block by just blackholing Chinese traffic. What it was actually doing was a massive MITM attack against non-SSLd HTTP connections from inbound connections to China, from Chinese users abroad visiting Chinese websites. It's an extremely clever trick that is only possible if you have the…

I agree in general, but in this specific case, Beijing can just demand access to Baidu's private keys and MITM all traffic passing through the GFWoC.

Chinese government already has a root CA in all browsers.

Re: GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack

#266

Post by vixsomnis »

mirashii wrote: post #219
vixsomnis wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not well-versed in the technical details of defending from DDOS, but unless it's a mathematical NP-complete problem, they have a chance.

Honestly, if you start by saying you're not well versed, how can you confidently make a statement about whether it is possible or not? Large scale DDOSes are usually the most damaging when they're high bandwidth (Layer 7 attacks can usually gradually be mitigated by well written firewall rules placed on the proximity of the network). When a DDOS is just maxing out the bandwidth coming into your network or sometimes e…

I'm not confident. I'm saying there could be a way to mitigate DDOS that we don't understand yet.

It's unlikely, but possible.

Re: GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack

#267

Post by semi-extrinsic »

xorcist wrote: post #115
pstadler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth there's an article[1] from Craig Hockenberry. His servers were hit by massive amounts of traffic from China earlier this year, targeted (randomly?) at Iconfactory's website. The charts are quite impressive. [1] http://furbo.org/2015/01/22/fear-china/

That doesn't look anything like the attack on GitHub. His server buckled from a couple of thousand requests because his webserver was misconfigured. GitHub probably handles an order of magnitude more requests on any normal day.

I'm not sure you understand the concept of "order of magnitude". Taken literally, you're saying you think Github handles 10 000 requests per day, which is about a factor of 10 000 to 100 000 (4-5 orders of magnitude) too low.

Re: GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack

#268

Post by nilbot »

weberc2 wrote: post #234
Qantourisc wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should never take up arms for a thread that has no human casualties, especially when there are alternatives. If your neighbour enter your home uninvited, because the door is not locked, the first thing you do is ask nicely not to do that. The next thing you do is lock the door. You don't start shooting at them first ...

This wouldn't be the first time China has hacked US-based organizations.

Correct, 2011 Google

Re: GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack

#269

Post by rmc »

meowface wrote: post #261
rmc wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't allow foreign raiding parties to enter our country to loot private businesses. Really? The US government does just that, by mass spying of telecommunications.

Both are unethical, but there is a difference between spying (sitting with some binoculars by a window, or snooping around inside the building) and destructive actions (blowing up the entrance with a constant stream of TNT so no one else can get in). US does the former, China does both.

The US does damaging unethical things. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9285146 They aren't just observing.

Re: GitHub under ongoing DDoS attack

#270

Post by jebblue »

srj wrote: post #229
diminoten wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all, what the hell? Realize you're talking to folks who do this kind of stuff for a living, rather than just the random Internet denizens of most other websites. The FBI will regularly inform and assist companies who've been breached, for example. The US government is very interested in protecting US companies. That said, they don't quite have any guidance from congress on how to do that, so right…

When I was an admin of an IRC network we regularly reported large scale DDoS attacks to an FBI agent assigned to us. He didn't care. Some of those attacks took the network down for a while and resulted in many users moving to other networks. In at least two cases we even figured out the identity, address, and phone numbers of the people doing it and there was no movement on it. Then one day one of the people we had t…

How did the new agent perform for other cases? Was he/she more attentive than the first agent?
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