Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 09/15/2009 11:42:39 AM PDT by Kieri
Computerworld - A company providing online payment-processing services for U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) is back online after being disrupted by a distributed denial-of-service attack over the weekend. The attack on Piryx began Friday afternoon and lasted into the early hours of Saturday morning, temporarily disrupting a Wilson fundraising effort that was under way at that time, Piryx CEO Tom Serres said. It also knocked out services for about 150 other Piryx clients, he said. Piryx is a nonpartisan Austin-based start-up that provides services to help political candidates and nonprofits manage online campaigns and fundraising.
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
They only do that if it’s a ‘Rat......we need some conservative hackers......
The attacks appear to have been directed at the JoeWilsonforCongress.com site, Serres said. At the time the attacks started, the site was handling about 100 transactions per minute and had already collected more than $100,000 from people who wanted to contribute to Wilson's campaign, he said.
Initially, the traffic generated by the DDoS attack was manageable, but soon Piryx began noticing "massive bandwidth spikes" that knocked its servers offline, Serres said. The data center hosting Piryx's servers confirmed that it was the victim of a DDoS attack. At its peak, the DDoS flood generated about 1Gbit/sec. of traffic, which is about 1,000 times the normal traffic on Piryx, Serres said.
After several failed attempts at mitigating the attacks, filters were put in place to block the traffic early Saturday morning. Service has been normal since then, Serres said. It's not known from where the attacks originated, but he said it appears to have been initiated by those opposed to Wilson's comments. "It was clearly politically motivated to take down Wilson's ability to raise funds online," Serres noted.
The incident appears to be one of the rare instances of a politically motivated attack against a Web site in the U.S., said Kirsten Dennesen, an intelligence analyst with VeriSign's iDefense Labs. The attention attracted by Wilson's comments, especially through social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter, appears to have contributed to the attack, she said.
More like a DKoS attack
Send checks or money orders to Wilson’s address - that also saves him on credit card fees.
Very unlikely. A DDoS is performed by marshaling a 'bot-net', i.e. a bunch of computers like the one you are using now, that have been compromised by a virus, worm, or trojan.
Typically, they are used to send out massive amounts of spam. But, occasionally they are used for an attack like this.
The person controlling them is hidden behind many layers, including some in a foreign country that is not friendly to US law enforcement.
Tracking these attacks, why? We need agencies that have even one ounce of interest in justice. The party in power cannot be challenged and the feds that want to keep their pensions will do nothing.
I had to try several times before my contribution went through.
When DOS attacks begin, why can't the attacked site simply block all traffic from said "unfriendly" country? If the attack stops, a very strong link has been verified.
The DDoS traffic itself isn't coming from an unfriendly country. It's just being controlled via multiple layers, which usually include an unfriendly country.
The traffic comes from ordinary PCs in homes, connected to the 'Net via DSL or cable. The owner of the PC isn't even aware of it, except possibly recognizing that their connection is really slow.
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