Denial of Service Attack

[rfontaine]

Well it had to happen. One of my sites has become quite successful and over the last month has done far better than my expectations could have envisioned.

This success seems to have made the site a target, perhaps by competitors or maybe someone just has too much time on their hands. I have been fighting off bad bots since day one, but this is the biggest bad bot of them all.

Some malicious (insert expletetive here) has launched a DDOS on my server and knocked it down. My hosting provider is trying their best to contain the attacker(s) but it is a difficult process.

I would love to get my hands on this (insert expletetive here) person and wring their (insert expletetive here) little neck.

Maybe we should form a special hit squad, like the Israeli's have - in this club, if you create DDOS attacks then you be prepared for a special visit in the middle of the night. Every webmaster could pay $10 a month to join the club. This could do alot to prevent this kind of thing.

Venting.

[wheel]

Please post your paypal account where I can send my $10 :).

DDOS's aren't that rare anymore. Has anyone ever had any luck in actually prosecuting someone who initiated such an attack on their site? Seems to me like it's almost the perfect crime, one can slaughter your competitors and never get caught.

[Argblat]

In a blatant snuff of the TOS for this message board (my apologies), here is a link to a New Yorker Article about a company that makes it's living off of helping fight DOS attacks.

The name of the company is Prolexic, and I saved this link for just an occassion ... I hope that it helps

Be sure to keep us informed of your adventures.

[newyorker.com...]

[Please don't remove the link until he at least has a chance to get it ... I'm only trying to help]

-Mike

[rfontaine]

Thank you Argblat, I got the link :-)

You know, this DDOS attack stuff is probably a good business for eastern european entrepreneurs. "For US$5,000 I can take down your competitors site, get you that #1 position on Google you have been wanting but do not have the expertise to get".

It's like the perfect black hat SEO.

[rfontaine]

Well, as it turned out the DOS attack seems to have come from China. I guess that is a common location for this sort of thing.

[Key_Master]

Could be China but could just as likely be coming from another country via a proxy.

Not to derail this thread, but is there any such thing as a "good" visit from China?

[rfontaine]

What do you mean "Good Visit from China'?

[Key_Master]

A legitimate hit- a visit from a real live human being who just happens to be physically located in China, sitting casually in front of a computer, who is actually interested in the content of that page and nothing more.

I know, I know. It's a tough concept to grasp. :)

[rfontaine]

I bow down to the master. All of your concepts are difficult to grasp.

Be that as it may, I take it you have had exprience in this matter and feel there are alot of bad china based bots and visitors from china are likely to be these bots rather than real "good" visitors.

I have heard tell some sites block the whole china net with at least some good result.

[Key_Master]

I lifted all my bans on China to see if things had changed at all during the few years I disallowed Chinese traffic.

It's worse than it ever was before.

[rfontaine]

What do you think these china based bots are attempting to accomplish? I am thinking along these lines:

Stealing content, knocking off sites that rank higher, safe against US and Western Europe Law.

In china, US$1 is alot of money so they can hook up with Adsense (which has become evil to some extent by encouraging this kind of thing) and do very well.

[rfontaine]

It seems to me these denial of service attacks are becoming more common. I wonder how often it is a real case of the competition trying to take another business site down.

[Xuefer]

According to a study/report from the begining of 2005, most of hijacked PC(desktop/server) is not controlled by Chinese but by ppl in other countries.