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Major Internet Attack
Several websites including Twitter and Tumblr were unreachable during an extended period for many internet users Friday following an online attack.
Web technology provider Dyn said its domain name system, or DNS, service was subject to a massive distributed denial-of-service attack starting at 7:10 a.m. on Friday.
Denial of service attacks can knock websites offline by flooding them with junk data, blocking the way for legitimate users. Dyn’s DNS services are a key part of the digital supply chain that allows web addresses—Twitter.com, for instance—to take users to the infrastructure that hosts them.
Should we be pleased that they didn’t punch through our security, or dismayed that they didn’t think we were worth attacking?
Whodunnit?
Were you affected?
Published in General
Depends on your perspective. We were still feeling the effects of the DNS disruption for a bit after, and that cost us our access to Ricochet for an interminably long couple of minutes.
The attack does bring up another item, though. Recall Obama’s giveaway of the Internet to any nation that feels like exerting control. A critical part of the Internet is that DNS system. The Domain Name System is what maps names (e.g., Ricochet, or Fox News, or CNN, etc) to the actual numerical address (an IP address, of the form 192.168.2.3 in the current IPv4 system, or 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 in the new (and slowly being implemented) IPv6 system; necessary because we’re rapidly running out of numerical IPv4 addresses in the world). Without a functioning DNS, we’ll be forced to memorize the 192.168.2.3 or 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 kind of numerical addresses for all those Web sites we want to get to.
DYN will learn, and amazon route 53 is very good. As are a number of other DNS serving facilities. But they coordinate so as to avoid address conflicts, which can disrupt if not outright block accesses to the desired sites. That coordination will be lost, also.
Eric Hines
This was just another of his innumerable acts intended to weaken America.
Why we tolerate this traitor is beyond me. I really hate being Cassandra.
Have they got a union that we can donate to?
I know it is in jest but these are horrible people doing horrible things. It’s not just social media that suffers from this and it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
4 more years, 4 more years……
Just found this thread.
About the time you all were reporting issues . . . I was trying to view online WSJ comments under an editorial and it’s the first and only time ever – that bold letters appeared (wish I’d paid attention to the particulars) advising that it wasn’t going to happen. Probably just a coincidence?
Aren’t those lines from a John Lennon song?
Evidently, the supporters of Wikileaks don’t like how the US is treating Assange.
They’ll have to pry ’em from Our cold dead hand.
….and nothing of value was destroyed.
Kudos to anybody who gets the reference (ironically, I actually like the Cats musical).
The horror.
NIIICE!!
And they wiped it with a cloth first, just to be sure.
I note that the media have pointedly failed to make this connection.
Been around the internet for awhile I see.
I kind of miss the old days.
Heh. I was actually just (mis)remembering The Critic cartoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVXJmfd3cmg
lowtech redneck
If I mentioned the name moot, would it ring any bells?
I only learned his name while casually following gamergate news on that defunct Escapist mega-thread; I’m afraid the first half of my name is quite accurate (the second is half irony and half appropriation in the name of defiant Southern pride, like Yankee Doodle Dandy). I didn’t even have personal internet access until about ten years ago, and I just used the internet at college for mostly research purposes. I had heard about 4Chan from friends, but it was described as a hackers hang-out, and I was frankly afraid of picking up a virus. I’m no longer as ignorant, but I prefer more structured formats.