SDF Punted, Due to DDOS

bullshizzle writes "The longest running Public Access UNIX System (SDF, running BSD) est. 1989 had their services terminated abruptly by NWLink because of a DDoS attack. Termination was carried out immediately without prior notification, which violates their contract (page1, page2). Complaints can be filed to the Washington State Attorney General's Office by filling out this simple form conveniently located online. You can follow the story at lonestar.org." While still bad, I've been corrected - SDF was *not* the longest running public access Unix - ArborNet (Located right here in my town) has been around for at least a number more years.

Comments

Their forum

[Some Bitch]

They have a temporary forum for discussion (top comment atm is about making the front page at /.).

Sorry Won't Fly.

[linuxdoctor]

According to the copy of the agreement, "Northwest Linux may terminate the Agreement at any time and for any reason by prividing written notice of termination and refunding a pro rata portion of fees paid by Customer to Northwest Link for servies not yet rendered."

It doesn't say "prior written notice" but simply "written notice." That means that they can pull the plug on you at any time and tell you why afterwards.

It's interesting that the previous sentence says "either party" can terminate only for breaches of the contract that are not corrected within 15 days. In reality that only applies to Customer since the next sentence authorizes Northwest Link to do whatever it feels like doing.

Anyway, we only have half the story. It would be nice to see what Northwest Link has to say.

Tough luck.

Re:Sorry Won't Fly.

[innate]

Northwest Link has this to say:

Posted to SDF message board by the owner of NWLink:

For starters let me say that I fully support SDF and what they are doing
as a long time net user and admin of public access unix boxes. Having been
the victim of multiple attacks over the past 15 years I know how much of a
pain they are.

Over the past 3 weeks SDF has been attacked 3 times that we can document,
we believe that one more network related issue was directed towards them
as well but we were not able track down the destination while it was occurring.

Yesterday morning as in the other events we shut down SDFs port and had the
IP blocked at each of our backbone providers (UUNet, Verio %26 ELI). This effectively
shutdown our entire customer base while the Distributed Denial of Service attack was
under way and until we had the ip blocked. During and Following these attacks we
receive notice from our large line customers that have Quality of Service provisions
in their contracts that they want credits.

These credits are somewhat substantial and which we are contractually obligated to
provide. We have issued over $30K in credits over the past 3 weeks when these attacks
occur. This coupled with the customers that cancel because of their inability to
use the service they are paying for has caused more then a little harm to my business.

Steven has full access to the equipment at this time, we are not holding it hostage
as the webpage page maintains. In fact we suggested he go to Semaphore directly, this
is where we have our network equipment in Seattle. This was following a move on Thursday
from our old Bellevue location. He acknowledged to me in a phone call a few minutes ago
that he is working with them to get a contract signed. It is going to cost more, however
I suspect the price that he is paying to them is more then fair for his bandwidth usage.
What NWlink was charging was an excellent deal for the bandwidth being used.

Steven explained to me that he was quite surprised by the direction this had taken when
I spoke to him a short time ago. He knew what we did and why we did it. I to am sorry
to see any customer go but had no choice in this matter to keep our other customers
functional who pay the bills and salarys of my staff.

Doug Palin
CEO

What a shame! And who's to blame?

[teqo]

I have got my SDF public shell access at lonestar about two years ago, and I love it! It's (almost, because they required people to send in a buck to show they seriously want to use it and don't create lots of fake accounts) free, they have nice services, rely mostly on their users' affection and willingness to donate money or equipment to them, and you can upgrade for some money to use more features... I hope they will manage to migrate to their new hoster...

What puzzles me is that NWLink seemd to have disconnected SDF because they fell preyto some DDoS'ing, they were not actively involved in some (D)DoS towards other sites, at least that's how I read the announcement!

Consequently, this DDoS might have been one of the most successful one reported, since it not only hogged their connection and thus technically Dos'sed them for a while, but this led to some organizational DoS carried out by NWLink!

How can they dare blaming the victim? And how can they dare putting all the consequences (that is, disconnection) onto the victim as well? Is this legal? Is this good practice? And: Does it help stop the DDoS towards SDF? Okay, the target host(s) is/are down, but the packets might rush to the dangling patch cable end anyway, crossing NWLink's infrastructure...

All in all: Thanks to the DDoS people attacking a nice and free public service! :( (Not that I am some DDoS fan of any kind, but aren't there much more promising targets out there, both in terms of popularity, evilness and challenging huge trunks? Or did some script kiddies just got their shell accounts revoked, and now they felt like stomping their virtual feet? I hope you have learnt to deal better with your frustration by the age of 12...)

And big thanks to NWLink for dealing with a customer's problem in a great and professional way by supporting a DDos through fully shutting down services!

--
"Where do you wanna go today / Somewhere you could never take me"
-- Chumbawamba

Why don't the police think of this?

[pyramid termite]

Clearly, if they started arresting the victims of crime, crime would instantly stop as all the victims would be in jail and safe from the criminals out roaming the streets. It's just another example of how the online world is showing society new and innovative ways to solve serious problems.