FTP under massive DOS attack

Pile
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FTP under massive DOS attack

Religions of Peace(tm) strike again apparently...

One day after our page peanut butter disproves evolution made the front page of Digg and got tons of visits, we started experiencing a massive denial-of-service attack. Basically, a really lame ICMP flood. It wasn't difficult to stop, and now we get to contact the FBI and turn our logs over to them because some little dweeb thought it might be cool to see if he could bring the site down.

I don't understand why people think that doing something like this will make much difference? The fact that someone would try to destroy or shut down a web site because it says something they disagree with is a testimonial to how fragile their own sense of righteousness may be, don't you think?

 


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i love that look on the

i love that look on the guy's face when he's about peel back the paper cover on that peanut butter.  he seriously looks like he thinks there is a possibilty that an elephant will pop out.

i just finished my work for a ms in telecommunications.  network forensics is one of my strong areas.  all i can come up with, is that perhaps this guy thought you wouldn't know evolution from peanut butter and think that following the digg you might think your problem was the slashdot effect.  personally i think everyone involved in computer crime has been and will continue to be a bunch of cowards.  otherwise, in this case, they would have been satisfied with posting their version of an educational response.  if someone is so confident in their belief in god why are they afraid of a little criticism?  but i guess as with any group, one bad seed makes the entire bunch look bad.


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Wow, so is network

Wow, so is network forensics like a separate dicipline these days?  That's cool.  I can understand why.  It's very involved.

 

I just wish the feds would get off their asses and start prosecuting more of these computer tampering cases.  They don't seem to care much about the Internet unless someone's selling bongs over it.

 


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Peanut butter is

Peanut butter is pasteurized to prohibit the growth of life forms.  When it isn't properly pasteurized then we get the samonella problems like what happened a few months ago.

 Do fundies work overtime in finding new ways to look moronic?


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the sad thing about network

the sad thing about network forensics is that most of the training is only available to law enforcement and most people that are interested are not interested in working the beat for 10 years just to get trained.  fortunatly the whole problem on the corporate level has cause a few great books to surface and my program is lucky to have an fbi officer as an alumni that has come back as adjunct faculty.

you should read the cukoo's egg by cliff stole.  it's an old book but a perfect example of how persistent a civilian has to be in order to get anyone high up in law enforcement to listen.  you probably know your local police department won't even have a clue what you're talking about if you try to report a computer crime. 


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shelleymtjoy wrote: you

shelleymtjoy wrote:

you should read the cukoo's egg by cliff stole. it's an old book but a perfect example of how persistent a civilian has to be in order to get anyone high up in law enforcement to listen. you probably know your local police department won't even have a clue what you're talking about if you try to report a computer crime.

Excellent book! 

I read it a long time ago and really enjoyed the detail on UNIX and the computer stuff.  I'm sure if I read it today the computer stuff would seem really antiquated with all the cables and printers he used. 

He has a great writing style, too, but his second book was a disappointment. 

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Susan - You're now my new

Susan - You're now my new favorite person on here.  I read way more than I have time to do so and you're the first person I've met in a long time to read one of the random things I pick up that wasn't on a best sellers list - let alone two!

I agree about the book though - I was surprised he was so off.  I know someone from one of my former classes that knows Cliff Stoll personally.  Never thought about it before but next time I see him I'll have to ask if he has any thoughts on those predictions now and perhaps if it discouraged him from writing futher(?).


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Yeah, we have had that

Yeah, we have had that issue to a certain extent here.  It solves nothing, and as it has been here, anytime we get people who try to take us down (such as Kent Hovind) it just makes us try all the harder to fight back and step up our efforts (such as Operation Spread Eagle in that case). 

But yeah, there are whole teams that do nothing but look through logs to find assholes.  I imagine it would not be a fun job.   


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Gizmo wrote: But yeah,

Gizmo wrote:

But yeah, there are whole teams that do nothing but look through logs to find assholes. I imagine it would not be a fun job.

About two weeks ago I found myself analyzing network traffic packet by packet for three days straight.  Granted this isn't the case with the typical and more frequent attacks but when it's large scale the adrenaline rush from knowing you're getting closer to nailing the bastard can be so motivating...   


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shelleymtjoy wrote: Susan

shelleymtjoy wrote:

Susan - You're now my new favorite person on here. I read way more than I have time to do so and you're the first person I've met in a long time to read one of the random things I pick up that wasn't on a best sellers list - let alone two!

I agree about the book though - I was surprised he was so off. I know someone from one of my former classes that knows Cliff Stoll personally. Never thought about it before but next time I see him I'll have to ask if he has any thoughts on those predictions now and perhaps if it discouraged him from writing futher(?).

Cukoo's Egg was a fun read.  To think it all started over a charge (less than 50 cents if I remember correctly) against a department's computer budget.  He was just determined to figure out where it belonged.

I could just see Cliff bicycling up and down the hills when his pager went off to indicate the hacker was online.  Can't you just see all the cables and wires he hooked up to the old fashioned printers to grab keystrokes?

I got tickled when he berated himself for trying to notify the feds.  

How he figured out WHERE they were by the time it took for the signals to be sent and received was awesome.

Of course, this was pretty much before the days of the sophisticated hackers.  I wonder if the same thing happened today if he would be blown off like he was then.

 

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Susan wrote: Of course,

Susan wrote:

Of course, this was pretty much before the days of the sophisticated hackers. I wonder if the same thing happened today if he would be blown off like he was then.

Despite his flawed predictions in the second book I do find him to be simply brilliant.  Also, I had this discussion with law enforcement before... It seems to be the prevailing opinion that this would still happen today (being blown off) unless some sort of suspected terrorism was involved.

I had the oppertunity to go to Russia but couldn't make it because of medical problems.  Apparently in countries like Russia, Germany, and the Middle East it is not uncommon to see the same security breaches we saw her 5-10 years prior.  This is because of the decreased ability to update hardware & software and the increased ability to find ready-made malicious code online.