Only Free Republic Stands After Vista SP2

[KungFuBrad]

My windows vista had me download 3 updates today. Told me they where "Important" one was called Vista Service Pack 2.

After downloading them I can not get to any web pages except Free Republic.

I am guessing its a DNS problem but Free Republic must be a SuperPage. It's faster then a speeding vista problem, able to leap DNS problems with a single bound,etc,etc.

[Jet Jaguar]

We have it in SC.

I used to subscribe to it. But, I switched about a year ago.

[leilani]

Time Warner Cable blames DDoS attack for spotty service.

[Dr. Thorne]

Not good. Slow summer, fewer vacationers. Construction jobs are gone. Retail is a disaster. Malls are empty with 25% vacancy. Manufacturers are cutting back.

Luckily, I work remotely for an East Coast firm.

[Nachum]

LOL. I cannot access your link. Can you give us poor sots with Time Warner the gist of the info?

[Jet Jaguar]

f you’re a Time Warner Cable subscriber who has been having trouble with your Internet service lately, the company wants you to know why. In a letter to Ars, Jeff Simmermon, the director for Digital Communications at TWC, told us, “We’ve been having serious service problems in SoCal related to hacker activity.” The company has posted an official statement on the issue with a few more details, but the culprits’ identities are as yet unknown (or being kept out of the public while the situation is under investigation.)

In its official statement, Time Warner Cable states that the attacks have been occurring over the past seven days and that they have caused customer DNS queries to repeatedly time out. The company’s statements refer to these outages as “sporadic timeouts which appeared to be random events,” implying that it took corporate IT time to ascertain the malicious intent behind these seemingly random failures.

These sort of attacks are scarcely news to any major ISP, but Time Warner admits that the problem this time around has been both larger and more difficult to control. As of February 24, the ISP claims to have deployed additional early detection and response capabilities, but declined to offer additional details on how the new systems function or if they closed any newly discovered loophole that allowed this attack on the ISP to occur. Boilerplate advice follows: customers who want to reduce their chance of being infected by malware or zombified by a botnet should update their antivirus scanner and/or deploy some sort of firewall. The standard “we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you” concludes the statement.

Kudos to TWC for stepping up and admitting the existence and scope of the problem—better to tell your customers there is an issue rather than let them sit around pulling out their hair. If the ISP really wants to make a good impression it could pro-rate the monthly bill for those customers who were effectively knocked offline for significant amounts of time, but TWC’s apology may not extend into actual service compensation

[Nachum]

I’m up now

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Nice gig. :)

(sort of confirms what I thought)

At one point that area was way up on my list of “plan b” if/when things go south here. Been a while though since that seemed optimal from what I’ve been monitoring.

Beautiful country though. Just thought I’d ask. Thanks.

[Nachum]

Yep. Hackers. It is had happened before. We haven’t been down long before they fixed it.

[Dr. Thorne]

Luckily, I work remotely for an East Coast firm.

But maybe not tomorrow unless TW gets healthy. I can use the day off.

[Cindy]

http://www.us-cert.gov

#

ON THE INTERNET:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/975497.mspx

[Tellurian]

Time Warner Cable blames DDoS attack for spotty service.

Thanks ... I guess DDoS means somebody's spamming on a big scale? ... (Can't get any details here: "Firefox can't find the server at www.arstechnica.com")

I'll have to try later.

[Cindy]

“...better to tell your customers there is an issue rather than let them sit around pulling out their hair.”

BIG DITTO.

[leilani]

Oops sorry, lol. I didn't even think - I'll copy & paste:

_______________________

Time Warner Cable blames DDoS attack for spotty service

Time Warner Cable posted a statement yesterday informing users that the slow performance they've seen over the past week hasn't been random network failure. For the past seven days, the company's network has been attempting to thwart a DDoS attack that's had a negative effect on DNS query response times. By Joel Hruska | Last updated February 26, 2009 12:30 PM

If you're a Time Warner Cable subscriber who has been having trouble with your Internet service lately, the company wants you to know why. In a letter to Ars, Jeff Simmermon, the director for Digital Communications at TWC, told us, "We've been having serious service problems in SoCal related to hacker activity." The company has posted an official statement on the issue with a few more details, but the culprits' identities are as yet unknown (or being kept out of the public while the situation is under investigation.)

In its official statement, Time Warner Cable states that the attacks have been occurring over the past seven days and that they have caused customer DNS queries to repeatedly time out. The company's statements refer to these outages as "sporadic timeouts which appeared to be random events," implying that it took corporate IT time to ascertain the malicious intent behind these seemingly random failures.

These sort of attacks are scarcely news to any major ISP, but Time Warner admits that the problem this time around has been both larger and more difficult to control. As of February 24, the ISP claims to have deployed additional early detection and response capabilities, but declined to offer additional details on how the new systems function or if they closed any newly discovered loophole that allowed this attack on the ISP to occur. Boilerplate advice follows: customers who want to reduce their chance of being infected by malware or zombified by a botnet should update their antivirus scanner and/or deploy some sort of firewall. The standard "we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you" concludes the statement.

Kudos to TWC for stepping up and admitting the existence and scope of the problem—better to tell your customers there is an issue rather than let them sit around pulling out their hair. If the ISP really wants to make a good impression it could pro-rate the monthly bill for those customers who were effectively knocked offline for significant amounts of time, but TWC's apology may not extend into actual service compensation

[dr_lew]

Not good. Slow summer, fewer vacationers. Construction jobs are gone. Retail is a disaster. Malls are empty with 25% vacancy. Manufacturers are cutting back.

But the DOW is up! I've noticed in the past weeks that there have been a lot of "DOW 4000" doom-sayers on CNBC et al. Tonight I saw them being castigated by the host for being so wrong. But why is the DOW up? I'm just sure it's being propped up with TARP money, or something. The bear's on the show were being very defensive, and the bull's were saying, "Hey, up is up! The market's up!" The unreality is palpable.

[leilani]

Check post #45 & #53 - 2 of us copied & pasted it for those of you with the outage issue.

[plinyelder]

Thank You

I’ll give it a try.

[Tellurian]

Thanks again. Most sites are coming in now. TW is on the ball this time.

[Nachum]

Thanks.

[bruinbirdman]

" I am Time Warner Cable too. I can only get into a few sites, but can’t open email. I have called in the past and found that they’ve been hacked"

Who's on the cover this week?

yitbos

[Dr. Thorne]

I think that there's a huge amount of money on the sidelines itching for the opportunity to get back in. Lots of traders are sitting around doing nothing and they want back in the game. Some of the less disciplined are believing the "green shoots" crap. Some execs are actually raising their companies' market caps so that they have enough cash to pay the execs' salaries and bonuses before they bail.

This is a sucker's rally.