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DDoS for Fun and Profit
First there's the Microsoft worm, reported earlier, which in addition to all the other damage has apparently knocked Microsoft's Windows XP activation servers (and Bank of America ATMs) off the net. Then we've got a report about the ongoing demise of DALnet, perhaps not the way we expected it to go. And Canada discovers a risk of online voting.
It's dated January 24. Nothing about April.
DALnet has had practically no public servers available since sometime early December, this thing is no joke.
I believe the news clipping was labeld in such a way to make a play off Aleph1's famous phrack magazine article describing buffer overflows, which was titled "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit".
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Does anyone ever check the dates on articles? Or the content?
Uhh...the Slashdot article on the sale of DALnet was a joke, but the DDoS attack on DALnet is very real. Actually, several IRC networks have been getting DDoSed in recent months.
I've been given the 'routine maintenance' runaround on non-mssql bombing days twice. About 8 months ago they told me I wouldn't be able to activate for at least 24 hours because of 'routine maintenance and a database upgrade'. Activated two days after. 2 months later I called about 3am CST and was told that during that time is when they do their 'routine maintenance'. When I got them during a good time after that, the operator (poor guy) hassled me about my re-activating. Even after I told him that I just changed out some hardware on the same computer, he insisted on telling me that I couldn't install XP on a second computer (as in he didn't believe me). After a 10 minute conversation he finally gave up and gave me activation, but with a stern warning ("Well, just remember that this is the third time you've activated this copy in 6 months").
2 months after that I left Windows for good and latched on to Linux. So far I haven't had to call my distros for product activation, so I'm happy.
(Disclaimer: Linux isn't for everyone, not preaching, just my experience, yadda yadda yadda...)
Unless, of course, he did the install 30 days ago, and waited to install NOW. Point is, this really doesn't matter, and this guy can kiss my ass -- "I gotta stop my project for some unknown length of time" sounds like the lamest excuse I've ever heard. Maybe he's gotta make a run to Krispy Kreme. Regardless, XP allows you 30 days grace (beta versions 14 days).
Well, I can see why Bruce Perens added you to his foes list.
The 30-day grace is for an initial install. For hardware changes the rules are different:
Source: Service Pack 1 Changes to Product Activation. So apparently the guy had the nerve to install new hardware on an XP system that didn't have this service pack applied.
The take home lesson here: until the activation servers come back up, you should not install any new hardware on an XP system or your machine will be rendered inoperable. Unless you've installed SP1 first. In that case you can install your new hardware and cross your fingers that the MS activation servers are back up within 72 hours.
There have been at least two, possibly three or four, occasions where DALnet just shut down completely for a period of at least a few days (this latest one being in the range of like a week). After the first "big" DALnet shut-down, it seems a lot of channels moved to other networks; most of these channels have even gained numbers. Seems even if DALnet does return, a lot of the channels that left it will stay on their new-found networks. The few anime channels that came back to DALnet are very slowly gaining back their numbers, but they're nowhere near the levels they used to be. As of right now, the highest count is 51 users, which is really low for a DALnet anime channel. Highest warez channel count is 68, which is also really low for a DALnet warez channel. And even the MP3 channels, which probably were some of the biggest channels on DALnet, have lost major numbers. I seem to remember them being in the area of like 600+; current count is 166. So yeah, DALnet has really been taking it in the ass.
General consensus around the parts i hang out seems to be that losing DALnet wouldn't be such a bad thing. We'd all move our channels to other networks, and be done with it. Chat channels would really love EsperNet or IRCnet, and warez/MP3/ISO/PlayStation/etc. channels have a half-dozen networks to choose from, most notably EFnet (though i despise it). Anime channels would thrive on Aniverse. DALnet was great, but, unless things see a really dramatic improvement, i think there are many that would agree that it needs to be put out of its misery as soon as possible.
What has made this all really lame has been the fact that DALnet hasn't really said anything about this. Their eZine (the DALnetizen) has truly been the opposite of helpful throughout this whole ordeal. It seemed as though DAL was almost oblivious to what was happening. There would be a paragraph about Christmas, a paragraph about the benefits of PHP, a paragraph about poems, a paragraph about some new op or something, and then tucked away in a little corner would be a little sentence or two along the lines of "ps dalnet si getitng ddosed pls bare w/ us thx". After this most recent attack, however, they've started to get their act together a bit, and have posted a lot more information regarding the situation. Information can really be helpful to their users, if they want to keep them.
Also not helping the situation are rumours(?) to the effect that the DALnet administration has resorted to childish finger-pointing, and have pretty much detached themselves from each other. DALnet isn't really doing a very good job of assuring its user base that it'll be alright. :/ Hopefully, if DALnet is to survive, this will be remedied.
And, finally, the biggest blow to DALnet has been the de-linking of several of its (best) servers. Almost all of the "good" servers, the ones that everyone had as their first picks, have disappeared. Even the "fall-back" servers seem to be gone. Evidently DALnet is picking up a few new (or renamed, maybe, i can't be sure myself) servers, even in light of the attacks, however.
So DALnet's fate is really unknown. No one can be sure, but for now it's functioning, at least in the sense that it has the ability to carry users. Who knows, though, it could be down again tomorrow.
Someone should setup a website or something saying who went where, unless of course this has been setup already.
You could try searching for them here. That site maintains statistics on *all* the major IRC networks. It also has some very pretty graphs -- this one, for example, very graphically illustrates DALnet falling off the edge of the world.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
You get ten "points" before XP is supposed to demand re-activation. Trouble is, some stuff counts weirdly. IIRC, reformatting your HD counts as 3 points (it's a "hardware change" because the *volume serial number* changes when you reformat the drive). Some other devices (I forget which) also count as 3 points. Some people have had merely adding a new NIC or SCSI card count as all 10 points. Not to mention the bugs that sometimes make it decide it needs reactivation out of the blue (discussed to death in various XP forums).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?