[Lowdown] Recent and current Denial of Service attacks

[Alfredo Lopez]

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Hi all,

In the last few days, May First/People Link's service has been affected
by a series of Denial of Service attacks. In a Denial of Service attack,
the attacker sends huge numbers of requests (attempts to connect or see
a website) to a specific server or network of servers with the goal of
overwhelming the target and forcing it to crash or become unable to
function.

Earlier this week, our upstream provider Hurricane Electric -- the
people who get our servers onto the Internet -- experienced a huge
attack across many of its servers in several cities. This attack has
subsided as HE sucessfully defended itself and reinforced its DOS
defenses on its servers but for almost three hours our services were
crippled. We do not believe this attack was aimed specifically at us or
any of our members: Hurricane Electric serves connectivity to many
providers nationwide. We are cautiously optimistic that this situation
is now stabilized.

Yesterday, however, one of our members (irc.indymedia.org) was
specifically attacked by a DOS attack. Because this attack took so much
resource, it actually affected all servers and sites at our Telehouse
location in Manhattan. The attack was short-lived (about 10 minutes) and
ended on its own.

Today, we are experiencing yet another attack. This time, the attach has
been launched against Sahara Reporters: a member known as one of the
most important progressive news organizations in Africa. They have been
hit with DOS attacks in the past and one is happening right now. We have
been trying to get this site back on line all day now (since about 2:00
am) and have had very little information from Hurricane Electric about
what's going on.

No other sites are affected at this point but all members are involved
when one of us is attacked like this.

While probably unrelated, these attacks don't seem coincidental. With
the European economies in apparent free-fall, the struggles in North
Africa continuously sharpening and people in hundreds of U.S. and
Canadian cities joining a movement that clearly questions the premises
of these societies, it's no surprise that right-wingers would start
attacking. We're not sure and probably never will be how related all
this is but we can be sure that we're going to be facing this type of
craziness a lot more in the future and we are already discussing how to
prepare for that.

Members should monitor the bulletins on the website for updated information.

Abrazos,

Alfredo

- -- 
Alfredo Lopez
Co-Director
May First/People Link
Growing Networks to Build a Just World
http://mayfirst.org

Technology Manager
The Praxis Project
alopez at thepraxisproject.org

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