Slashdot Mirror
DoubleClick Hit by DDoS Attack
YetAnotherName writes "The Washington Times is reporting that everyone's most beloved online advertising distributor, DoubleClick, was subject to a DoS attack crippling the company's DNS servers, and preventing up to 75% of advertising from making it to web pages and surfers' eyes."
Oh, wait. It was DoubleClick?
Can I donate some computer time?
It's been so long since I've seen an ad I forgot about them.
I'm not sure whether the encouragement of DDOS-ing even 'evil' companies should be encouraged.
Trying to get rid of traffic they don't want to see... sounds like trying to get rid of adds we don't want to see.
ogg
Black cat, searing pain, flames...? I must be in Heaven! - Homer Simpson
On behalf of the Slashdot community, I would just like to say that this was indeed a terrible thing. I, and I believe I speak for everyone here when I say this, greatly missed the DoubleClick ads. Their intrusive nature, attempted trickery, and bright flashy lights are what make my internet experience what it is.
I hope that whoever did this terrible act is brought to justice, as such a horrible thing cannot go unpunished!
Although it may seem like some sort of poetic justice that Doubleclick was attacked...
The attacks had more far-reaching effects. Pages would take forever to load for me (certain pages, not all), if they used doubleclick ads, simply because the browser was waiting for the final item (the ad) to load.
Whether or not you like doubleclick, their widespread adoption made this a productivity hit for those of us who frequent pages w/ doubleclick content (even if we never notice it).
Help a college student
Seriously, Slashdot needs to shape up, or stop trying to be a news site. This happened yesterday. If you can't get your editors to greenlight stories faster than 24hours in advance, let subscribers do it like Fark does.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
I've had the following in my HOSTS file for a while now
0.0.0.0 ad.doubleclick.com
0.0.0.0 ads.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad2.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad3.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad4.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad5.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad6.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad7.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad8.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad9.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad10.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad11.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad12.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad13.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad14.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad15.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad16.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad17.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad18.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad19.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad20.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad.ch.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad.ca.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad.de.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad.fr.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad.jp.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad.nl.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad.no.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad.uk.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ln.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 m.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 m2.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 iv.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ebay.doubleclick.net
Lameness filter randomness: eed d ed wdwe de ff g v fdovk fok fb f osvi jfvioj asv d vp vv jspavj spav dsv aspdvj ede oijf o greg ewrg
The issue wasn't that Double Click had problems, but that every site that uses them become very slow.
Until the basic routing infrastructure of the net changes, this is going to be a common issue anytime a number of big sites all require another organization to serve up their pages (e.g. Akamai).
Thanks, Mike!
I rarely see ads in either IE or Mozilla.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
No matter how much I hate /ads/, a DDoS should not be tolerated no matter to whom it's directed. Weather it's kernel.org or microsoft.com, let's try to use our knowledge constructivly instead of destructivly. How does that sound? And where does any one person think a DDoS will get for anyone as a whole? If anything, it'll bring a stronger resolve to preventative measures and keep them going strong. They have the $!! so where will it really get those who started this "attack"?
IF this isn't a second DDoS, then this happened a couple days ago already.
First they are DDOS'ed and now they are going to be /.'ed.. what a day..
"It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad."
... to enter to recieve my free iPod Mini
-K
Don't one of the most aggresive advertisers in time, X10.
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
*bangs head to keyboard*
Must use preview button
Must use preview button
Must use preview button
What I tried to say, was "Don't forget one of the most agressive advertisers in time, X10", but the spontanity is somewhat gone now.
Oh well.
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
doubleclick obviously isn't using the DDOSBlock extension for Firefox.
All those sites that you go to that have these ads are staying in business because of them.
:)
False.
If DoubleClick went away so would a lot of that content.
True.
Gotta watch out for "all" and "never"...
The devil doesn't really need an advocate, eh?
<grrr>
Regarding CoolWeb we'd better skip the DDOS phase and go straight to beating the shit out of their employees with various blunt instruments, I call dibs on their "CEO". I just cleaned up a family's pc where the children got a fullscreen popup without any controls of naked 12-14 year olds, every single time they logged on. Courtesy of CoolWebSearch. That company is made up of a bunch of sick individuals, and they've perfected their "art" of drive-by-installing their spyware so much that the latest versions (there's about twenty different ones) are harder to get rid of than most virusses.
Not to get all MPAA on you, but when you block the ads, you're hurting the site. Not only that, but you're encouraging "innovation" on the advertisers side to keep you from blocking the ads. This leads to a mixing of advertising and content, so that the web pages start becoming all flash or all pictures so you can't filter out certain images without breaking the whole site for yourself.
Want to keep the subscription sites down and keep the free web up? Leave the banner ads be. Hell, click on them once in a while. If the advertisers and website are satisfied with how their ads are doing, they'll be less aggressive and less likely to piss you off.
http://adzapper.sourceforge.net/
a nifty plugin for squid. does more than just remove ads, it replaces them with a 'this ad zapped' image / swf, so pages don't render weird.
it's written in perl so it's easy to hack and is easily configurable.
No matter how many times I click refresh, the DoubleClick corporate site will not not display any banner ads, nor pop up nor pop under any X10 windows...
Oh, what did you say? "The leader in network advertising" only has tasteful advertisements on their own site?
Isn't that a tad hypocritical?
Shouldn't the people advocating annoying, bouncing, animated, rollover tripe beleive in their own products and techniques enough to use it on their own pages?
Clearly they don't, and they don't.
One could only dream of the day when all the advertisers who patronize DoubleClick ask them selves why DoubleClick doesn't use their own service to advertise their own service...
Perhaps because their customers would realize how much such techniques annoy and drive off potential clients....?
Nah, marketeers (as in mouse, not misspelling 8-) will never get wise to their own lack of wisdom.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
25% of DoubleClick's advertising is still getting through.
Do you consider it unethical to read a newspaper without reading their ads? Record a TV show and then fast forward through the commercials later? Get up and get food/go to the bathroom during commercials? Throw away mail flyers for products? Use a text based browser? Have a visual imparement?
In all these cases, you are ignoring/blocking ads. Sites have a right to try and advertise, but it's your computer, and you have a right to change the presentation to meet your needs.
Also if the advertisers learned a little something form successful advertising, such as Google and newspapers, they would have a much better chance of not getting blocked:
1) Be less obtrusive. The web is a random access media. Interrupting people with full screen or popup ads is annoying and counter the operation of the web. Thus people hate them and want them gone.
2) Be relivant. Do nto slather your ad over ever site on the internet. Target your ad at sites that attract people that care.
3) Be honest. A large number of ads are highly deceptive in their nature.
Double click violates all of these their ads are a pain, they advertise whatever, wherever and most of them are "Punch the monkey and win" or "You have a message" or "Your computer is broadcasting an Internet IP address".
I LIKE Google ads, since they relate to what I search for. Thus, if I want to buy something, I search and then look in the right hand column since the ads are unobtrusive, relivant to what I want, and honestly trying to sell me it.
Doing that will make them unblockable since the ads and the content are being served from the same IP address. However, there is nothing to stop someone with coming up with a clever HTML rewriter plugin/browser to strip out the content (readable text and meaningful binary content files) and make a simplified version of the (likely ad-ridden) original page.
My firewall program cannot detect deliberately broken up 'SCRIPT' tags via the document.write Javascript function--otherwise Google's AdSense advertising would be blocked too. If I didn't need Javascript, I could turn it off at the browser level and kill these ads as well.
Simple, HTML-only, text-based ads for me, thank you very much (works for Google)--I am on 'sessioned', time-limited dailup and cannot waste time downloading an (animated) ad banner image, or an (obnoxious, animated) shockwave ad.