Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Attacked Again
A sense of deja-vu this morning when I discovered that StopECG.org was offline, sending a few data packets revealed that half were lost and those getting through were slow. I contacted the host who confirmed that a massive amount of data was being thrown at the site in a deliberate attempt to take it offline.
This attack has been slightly more sophisticated than previous efforts however some quick work by the ever helpful folks at Gemini Data Loggers and a bit of tech wizardry by the upstream provider had us back online by lunchtime to spite the continuing attack.
This sort of activity is known as a denial of service attack, it is a criminal action and the police are investigating this and previous efforts to silence the site.
Why you might ask, would anyone waste the time, effort and money needed to launch such an attack, well it appears most likely a person or people exposed on StopECG.org would rather not have the truth about them revealed, unfortunately for them each attack increases the information we have on them, if the attacks continue it is only a matter of time before they are caught.
However it is best to minimise any downtime that results from such attacks, to do this we need more offers of hosting, if the site is mirrored and/or dns is easily switched when an attack begins then the site will remain available to readers at all times. If you can help by mirroring the site or by hosting it please get in contact, especially if you have the ability to take large bandwidth should an attack occur. Please also get in contact if you are able to offer any other technical expertise that would help us at this time.
Jules Woodell
This attack has been slightly more sophisticated than previous efforts however some quick work by the ever helpful folks at Gemini Data Loggers and a bit of tech wizardry by the upstream provider had us back online by lunchtime to spite the continuing attack.
This sort of activity is known as a denial of service attack, it is a criminal action and the police are investigating this and previous efforts to silence the site.
Why you might ask, would anyone waste the time, effort and money needed to launch such an attack, well it appears most likely a person or people exposed on StopECG.org would rather not have the truth about them revealed, unfortunately for them each attack increases the information we have on them, if the attacks continue it is only a matter of time before they are caught.
However it is best to minimise any downtime that results from such attacks, to do this we need more offers of hosting, if the site is mirrored and/or dns is easily switched when an attack begins then the site will remain available to readers at all times. If you can help by mirroring the site or by hosting it please get in contact, especially if you have the ability to take large bandwidth should an attack occur. Please also get in contact if you are able to offer any other technical expertise that would help us at this time.
Jules Woodell
Labels: denial of service, hosting, StopECG
