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stories filed under: "denial of service"
(Mis)Uses of Technology

(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
anonymous, denial of service, dos, scientology



Anonymous Might Not Be So Anonymous; Member Pleads Guilty To Scientology DoS

from the so-much-for-that-plan dept

While I can sympathize with the concerns that some folks have over Scientology, it did seem like the massive denial of service (DoS) attack against the group put on by "Anonymous" (basically a group of griefers from some online message boards) seemed to go a bit too far (and, yes, I recognize that many griefers think that their whole reason for being is to "go too far"). Now it appears that one of the kids involved in the denial of service attack has been arrested and agreed to plead guilty for the attack, meaning that at least some members of "Anonymous" aren't quite as anonymous as they believed. In the end, the whole thing seems to have done nothing much. It was a nuisance for Scientology, but allowed the group to portray itself as a victim, and certainly didn't do much of anything to slow the organization down.

44 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
(Mis)Uses of Technology

(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
botnets, denial of service, zombies



Botnet vs. Botnet: Can A Good Botnet Block A Bad One?

from the battle-of-the-botnets dept

Last year we wrote about how rival online scammer gangs had their botnets fighting each other by disabling trojans of competing botnets on their computers -- but it appears that some researchers have a different idea for creating a "good" botnet to fight the "bad" botnets being used for denial of service attacks (found via Slashdot). This is quite different than some older proposals to create "good worms" that go about automatically patching infected machines (which are wide open to abuse). Instead, the idea is rather creative. It involves setting up a distributed system of computers that effectively act as a way station for connect requests -- which then wait for the actual server to request the inbound requests. This prevents the server from being overloaded (though, I would imagine it could slow down access somewhat). Either way, it's nice to see efforts under way to stop such zombie botnets. Hopefully someone isn't sitting on a patent for such an idea and waiting to sue, like we've seen with other security measures.

8 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Legal Issues

Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
copyright, denial of service, p2p, sabotage

Companies:
emi, fox, paramount, pirate bay, sony, ubisoft, universal



The Pirate Bay To Sue Entertainment Companies For Attacks

from the could-get-interesting dept

Well, this could get interesting. Following the leak of MediaDefender's emails, the folks behind The Pirate Bay now believe they have enough evidence to sue many major entertainment firms for "infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming." Basically, there's evidence in the emails that a bunch of firms, including Universal, EMI, Sony, Paramount and others were using MediaDefender to try to mess with The Pirate Bay's system. Whether or not the lawsuit actually goes anywhere may depend on a lot of factors (including Swedish laws, which I am totally unfamiliar with). There may be some questions about how the emails in question were obtained. And, of course, the entertainment companies will likely counter that they were just trying to protect their own materials -- which could find a sympathetic ear in a courtroom. Either way it would be quite a lawsuit.

57 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
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