AT&T Blocks Part of 4chan

holdenkarau writes "Several news sources (Mashable, The Inquistr, etc.) are reporting that AT&T is blocking img.4chan.org in the southern United States. That server is used for the infamous /b/ board (the home of anonymous). TechCrunch calls the decision to block 4chan 'stupid,' noting that they may have 'opened perhaps the most vindictive, messy can of worms.' The Inquisitr suggests that 'The global internet censorship debate landed in the home of the free.' moot (who runs 4chan) asks users to call AT&T, while some others suggest more drastic action (like cutting AT&T fiber)." Update: 07/27 09:23 GMT by T : Readers' comments below suggest that a) the purpose of the block was to curtail the effects of a serious DDoS attack and b) that the block has now been lifted, at least for some regions.

Comments

Before we act too hastily..

[jx100]

http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg19609.html

The president of unWired (a much more reputable ISP) has also blocked the same server. A DDoS was apparently attacking said server which wast travelling over both lines. According to this post, the block was due solely to stop the DDoS.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[SmarkWoW]

You don't haul a girl off to jail if she was raped do you?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Calydor]

So to stop a DDoS attack on a server, they remove any and all access to that server?

Am I the only one seeing the irony here?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[toejam13]

But, we've already sharpened the pitchforks and lit the torches.

What are we supposed to do now?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[MichaelSmith]

So to stop a DDoS attack on a server, they remove any and all access to that server?

How else would you do it?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[partyguerrilla]

I don't know how credible this is http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/2523/1248672053880.png But the IP specified there is the same for http://img.4chan.org/

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Sex outside of marriage? You can be damned well sure she ought to be arrested.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/246259/Saudi_Arabia_Rape_victim_gets_200_lashes

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, try disconnecting the zombies on your network participating, instead?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[dotgain]

Well, I'd reverse the polarity of the main deflector dish, of course

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[KDingo]

I was confused until I read this.

http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2009-July/012198.html

If IP source headers are spoofed to somewhere else, say to AT&T networks, it makes sense to block them

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[fireman sam]

My God man, are you insane? That would be like crossing the streams and I don't mean like Ghostbusters, more like broke back mountain.

Slow day

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

Except said DDoS attacks happened und 2 weeks ago. Can't they act in a more timely fashion?

http://status.4chan.org/

See the post below the top one

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[dgatwood]

You don't haul a girl off to jail if she was raped do you?

That's clearly an attempt to draw an analogy, so it really isn't as offtopic as it sounds. And yes, in the case of repeated rape of the same girl by the same person, you might. It's called protective custody.

In this case, though, AT&T almost certainly isn't doing it to protect 4chan's server. I'm sure they couldn't care less about that. They do, however, care about the huge zombie botnet on their network that is probably racking up huge bandwidth bills for them with their upstream providers.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't haul a girl off to jail if she was raped do you?

You do if you're a faithful Muslim! Sadly, not joking: look at the horrific punishments given to rape victims in the past few years in e.g. Iran.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Opportunist]

Mission Accomplished!

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

just wait for further instruction from the groupthink. and remember remember.... --anon

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[dhammabum]

"We had to destroy the server to save it."

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Opportunist]

If they REALLY cared about what a zombie botfarm AT&T has become, they'd start cutting the users that allowed their machines to turn into spam- and DDoSbots. Instead they block access to a server. And not to protect this server, because of the very nature of the attack, AT&T bears the same if not the higher load of the DDoS.

They don't give a shit about hosting a zombie botnet. If they did, they'd cut their users, but that in turn would cause angry phone calls to their support center and a lot of canceled contracts. Instead, they block a server to all their customers, along the "can't see it, so it's no problem" theory.

The zombies still exist. And prepare for the next server to attack. *pondering*... Hmmm.... If I wanted to disallow AT&T users into a server, could I order a DDoS attack? I mean, if it was AOLlers it would be a no-brainer...

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[MaskedSlacker]

The obvious, blocking the zombies. If said zombies are also your customers, send them angry letters and bill them for the privilege. That's At&t standard operating procedure anyway.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

Before we act too hastily? This sort of thing should not happen in the first place!

AnoNet (http://anonet.org) is a "virtual Internet" that utilizes OpenVPN (http://www.openvpn.net) and Quagga (http://www.quagga.net) to provide a layer of anonymity and deniability on top of the Internet. It uses a chaotic yet cooperative routing scheme which allows anyone to use any IP address while still maintaining their existing Internet connection.

It has everything on it that the Internet does: web servers, FTP servers, DNS infrastructure, PGP keyservers, IM, IRC, streaming audio, game severs, etc. All Internet-aware applications should work fine as AnoNet is simply an addition to your operating system's routing table.

If you are fed up with companies that treat the Internet as their own, fight back!

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if it can be confirmed that this was in response to a DDoS attack, can we please update the title and summary? You know, as an effort to not be manipulated into spreading misinformation (lies) for people's (trolls) agendas?

Editors? Anyone?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[EvanED]

Am I the only one seeing the irony here?

There are plenty of ways such a decision would make sense. For instance, population A ("the south") is DDoSing 4chan. In so doing, they are disrupting access for everyone everywhere, including population B ("the north"), population C ("europe"), and population D ("alpha proxima"). By cutting off access from population A, they have made things only marginally worse for population A (since they couldn't get to it anyway), but have 'fixed' the problem for populations B, C, and D.

Was that the case here? Who knows.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah sure, and forgo site traffic and ad impressions? I don't think so. Slashdot has a long history of sensationalism in their titles even when the story or summary clearly doesn't match the enticing headline. They got you to post and stick around right?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[sortius_nod]

Unfortunately the very nature of communications is a war of control. If it's not wrestling the control from governments, it's about controlling users.

AT&T are well known for blanket bans, especially when it comes from reverse NDR attacks. The idea of having low cost human infrastructure working on one of the worlds largest commercial networks is one of the silliest ideas around.

The only people with any sort of expertise seem to be pushed out with redundancies, etc, by the upper management, and all you're left with is lackies getting paid enough to keep them working, but not enough to make them excel and executives that care more about golf. This pretty much makes any real network security or decent policy impossible.

While I don't like what's happening, I can understand it. It's all about the cheapest near sighted avenue. The accountants and executives only see short term benefits of actions like this. They're unaware that the impact both on brand and network performance is far more of a negative impact to revenue than any single DDoS can have.

Pretty much AT&T need to clean their act, network and image up or they'll end up in an irrecoverable position.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[node 3]

So to stop a DDoS attack on a server, they remove any and all access to that server?

How else would you do it?

The same logic behind the USA PATRIOT Act as a response to the threat to our freedom.

In order to save the village, we had to destroy it...

In order to stop the DDoS, we had to deny service to the site!

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[MaskedSlacker]

Pick an ethnic minority and have a party?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[ssintercept]

Finally, ATT sucks. Track their employees leaving the stores and beat the shit out of them, then vandalize their vehicles. Fuck man, it's obvious that they're a front for government spying. When their medical bills are greater than their paychecks and government stipends, the domestic spying will end.

finally, a rational, well thought out comment that is on topic and offers a solution.

there is nothing more to add to this discussion.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[h4rm0ny]

There is such a thing as orgasm during non-consensual sex. It can be very traumatic and confusing for the victim causing them to question themselves. It has been particularly damaging for children who were abused to have had their first orgasms the result of forced sex. Your implying that sexual stimulation indicates volition is very incorrect. Might as well say that the release of endorphins following physical pain indicates that the injured chose to be hurt.

The study you linked to about increased chance of pregnancy under rape is innaccurately characterised by yourself as saying "twice as likely". The article you linked to [b]doesn't[/b] say that rape increases the chance of conception (by any amount). It discusses the controversy over some research on the subject. Research, incidentally, that has many factors uncovered. It compares conception rates from casual, consensual sex with rape and it is very far from conclusive. For example, it makes the assumption that a woman is more likely to engage in casual sex when she is most likely to conceive. What is the basis for this assumption? It could just as likely be possible that women are less likely to do so - after all, human beings are one of the few species that uses sex as a means for a female to attract a male even when the female is not fertile. What makes more sense than to see if someone is a good partner first, with less risk.

And yes, though highly unusual and doubtless under-reported, there are cases of female sexual abuse of males (no, not for payment).

Finally, regarding the beating up of AT&T employees, should you not be going after the senior execs rather than the phone monkeys? Or do you just go for easy targets?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn. I was tricked and manipulated. :)

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[mdwh2]

Why is a DDoS attack bad? Because it stops people from being able to (legitimately) access the server. That's the irony.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

How else would you do it?

You nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[shentino]

You could call it a quarantine.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[TheP4st]

Gimme a funnel, some handcuffs, 5 liters of hard liquor and a few hours and by your logic I can have sex with anyone I want and it won't count as rape.

Actually your logical conclusion that it won't be counted as rape is correct, it will be seen as necrophilia.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I understand, from AT&T's point of view, the attack is originating from 4chan. Someone else is spoofing IP addresses to make 4chan spam AT&T with ACKs. Or something like that.

Sounds like AT&T might not be the one to blame here.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[ezzzD55J]

accidentally modded this 'redundant,' thereby accidentally enobling it more than i wanted.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[j-stroy]

/b/tard: What happen ?

/arcanine/: Somebody set up us the null'd packets.

moot: We get signal.

/b/tard: What !

moot: Main screen turn on.

/b/tard: It's You !!

AT&T: How are you gentlemen !!

AT&T: All your internets are belong to us.

AT&T: You are on the way to Great Firewall of North America.

/b/tard: What you say !! You'd best be trollin'

AT&T: You have no chance to survive make your time.

AT&T: HA HA HA HA ....

/b/tard: Take off every 'anon' !!

/b/tard: You know what you doing.

/b/tard: Move 'anon'.

/b/tard: For great justice.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Opportunist]

Irony? I thought that's established practice now. After all, what was it again that we did we do to counter the threat of terrorists that want to establish an oppressive, all-controlling regime that wants to take away any and all of our liberties?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Opportunist]

and population D ("alpha proxima").

They might judge our culture and civilisation based on what they see of us (kinda like we judge ancient civilisations from what we find in old tombs). It could well be the sane thing to block their access to /b, for the sake of all humanity (and of course for great justice).

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[ssintercept]

good stuff...

i am not so clever, obviously.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'd reverse the polarity of the main deflector dish, of course

Can do it. All reseve power is currently routed to the main shields.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently yes, you are the only one.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha Ha Ha it's funny because it's true!

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

In Phoenix Arizona they do.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[mysidia]

Yes, one way of stopping the attack is (unfortunately) to intentionally allow it to exceed.

This makes sense if it is the ISP mitigating the attack for their own self interest.

E.g. Protection of their own network, at the cost of one server, and (perhaps) at the cost of one customer.

Probably to ATT, the network is more important than any one server. They might not care all that much if a server has to be taken offline.

On the other hand, if a DDoS is negatively impacting their network, they may feel a need to either shut it down by any means, OR bill massive overages to someone.

In some cases, the latter, (which I think they might generally prefer) is more harmful

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[mysidia]

What makes you think botnet zombies are particular to their network?

ATT is a huge Tier1 network. Most of the zombies can very easily be on other people's networks and transiting ATT's network through numerous ATT customers.

In that case, the only real viable way to totally stop the attack fruitless at such a large scale is to null route it.

Most likely that's a choice between appending a specific filtering rule to tens of thousands of devices OR /dev/null'ing the destination on a few hundred.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Megane]

So the problem isn't AT&T, and the problem isn't really even the users (or more likely zombie bots) who are DDoSing AT&T, the real problem is the networks that are allowing the spoofed packets out. Because if you receive an IP packet from an end user with a source address that's not from your network, you should assume that it came from a new legitimate routing path and forward it right up. Because it's normal for your end users to set up crazy routing without even having an AS.

A big problem on the internets is ISPs that are run by idiots or assholes who don't understand (or care about) basic TCP/IP etiquette. It's not just spoofed packets, it's also spoofed BGP announcements. And freely allowing outbound port 25 access.

(I noticed recently when I was setting up and testing SMTP auth on my own mail server that AT&T apparently now blocks outbound port 25 for dynamic IP users, hooray for them. It still works from my AT&T static IP, though.)

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Twanfox]

AT&T has been blocking outbound port 25 access for quite some time, ever since I got my DSL line set up 3 years ago. They will, however, lift that block on request, or did when I asked.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

They weren't blocking other companies customers whose traffic came onto their lines. Just their own subscribers.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Darkness404]

The problem is, I know AT&T sucks but I have to use them (at least for cell service) because they are the only phone provider where I live. Perhaps some day that will change and I can get T-Mobile and a nice Android handset, but in 2009 the only way I can get service it with AT&T, no matter how badly they suck.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm aware that this happens and it sucks big time, BUT generally speaking, the middle-east isn't as much a shithole as you like to assume. I, of course, assume you're in the US. With your fake freedoms and all that other bullshit. I'd say in that sense, the middle-east is about on par with the US. The US does have the technological advantage over a lot of middle-eastern countries and you can drink alcohol (well.. when you're 21, which is a stupidly high age limit really) and dress however you like, but that doesn't automatically make any other country a shithole.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Ash-Fox]

Freenet is better at protecting your anonymity and content you access.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget, she needs to be pregnant and you need to drive her off a bridge AND be the sun of a drug runner, I mean rum runner. Then you can be a long standing senator. And it won't count as murder.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

If internet providers had any real competition, it would be true. But when your choices are very limited by the area, people use crappy providers, and they stay in business.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[rezalas]

This is the very reason at the ISP I work for we cut our user's access to the net once we discover they are spamming/botting/flooding anyone for any reason. We block them off, mark their account, and notify them by phone of why they lost internet access. Once they notify us they've had their PC cleaned we allow them access again. If they do it again though (and we monitor their bandwidth usage for two weeks to be sure they didn't miss something) we require them to bring in a receipt showing they had their PC cleaned by professionals and that they have antivirus before turning them on again. AT&T (if they really are attempting to protect them... which is likely BS) made the poor choice. We receive notification from AT&T when our customers SPAM or flood anyone about how they'll blackhole their IP if we don't stop them (effectively costing us an IP until we fix it), so I know they have an automated system for dumping individual attackers into a block list without interaction from us. This just seems like a power play to eliminate a server they don't particularly like.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[eltaco]

actually, you do under sharia law.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

I was circumcised by a cross eyed rabbi. I cross my own streams!

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

Except said DDoS attacks happened und 2 weeks ago. Can't they act in a more timely fashion?

http://status.4chan.org/

See the post below the top one

The DDOSing has been happening on and off for a few weeks now, and apparently it fell into full force around now. Everybody seems to think that it's AnonTalk zombie bots doing the spamming, but now /b/'s own users are helping by hammering F5. Regardless of what happened with blocking an DDOSing, /b/ is pissed off at AT&T. Having /b/ pissed off at you is not a place you want to be in, my friend.

-Samriel, posting Anonymously in solidarity

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

We've lost the bleeps, the sweeps, and the creeps...

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[King_TJ]

I think there needs to be a middle ground here, and frankly, I'd say your ISP goes over the line with all of those demands.
If I was using your ISP and was told I had to "bring in a receipt as proof that my PC was cleaned by a professional", I'd laugh and ask for my account to be canceled, right after that.

Among other things, I own my own business doing on-site service, much of which involves cleaning viruses and spyware off customer PCs - so I would obviously do this kind of work myself. (Or would you accept a receipt where I billed myself for my time?)

This stuff can happen to anyone, especially when 90% or more use the inherently insecure Windows operating system. In fact, severa of my very computer-savvy friends have managed to infect their PCs with nasty trojan horse viruses, not because they're "clueless" -- but because they took some risks downloading pirated software from Usenet, and someone decided to infect the self-extracting .EXE file that extracted the multi-sgement .RAR files they downloaded.

(Before you "throw the first stone" - consider that most computer professionals have a real need to evaluate fully-functional commercial software packages, without limitations or hassles of arbitrary "30 day trial periods" and so on. Many of us say "Screw the letter of the law!" in such instances. The reality is, it's YOUR butt on the line if you recommend some expensive software package be purchased at your workplace, only to find out months later that it has shortcomings that make it far less useful or reliable than you promised everyone it would be. Better to get your hands on a pirated copy to put through its paces for a while, so you know what you're getting into.)

And considering most people I know who use their computer enough to order broadband Internet in the first place own SEVERAL computers, typically networked together at home - it's not at all inconceivable they'd clean ONE machine, only to find out a second one was causing some/all of the spamming or flooding issues.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

You could cross-wire the thermal couplers and shunt emergency reserve power into the auxiliary deflector dishes.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[clone53421]

If I was using your ISP and was told I had to "bring in a receipt as proof that my PC was cleaned by a professional", I'd laugh and ask for my account to be canceled, right after that.

That's on the second offense. The first time you're only required to inform them that it's been cleaned. If you're successfully able to clean it yourself, you won't have the requirement of showing a receipt from a professional. If you're unsuccessful in cleaning it or you get re-infected shortly thereafter, you obviously need help.

In his exact words, on the first offense, service is restored "Once they notify us they've had their PC cleaned"; if it happens again, "we require them to bring in a receipt showing they had their PC cleaned by professionals and that they have antivirus". Not all too heavy-handed, really.

In fact, severa of my very computer-savvy friends have managed to infect their PCs [...] someone decided to infect the self-extracting .EXE file that extracted the multi-sgement .RAR files they downloaded.

Self-extracting RAR archives? Some free advice: The safe way to extract them is to open them in WinRAR and extract them like you would normal archives. That way if the self-extracting executable part is infected it won't affect your machine because you aren't ever running it.

most people I know who use their computer enough to order broadband Internet in the first place own SEVERAL computers, typically networked together at home - it's not at all inconceivable they'd clean ONE machine, only to find out a second one was causing some/all of the spamming or flooding issues

More free advice: clean the one you use for porn. ;P

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[EvilMole]

As was explained above, the attack may not be coming from AT&T's network - it may be coming from anywhere, but spoofing the packets so they look like they come from AT&T.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[misexistentialist]

What happens after the third time? Do they need to show you a letter from Torvalds certifying that he has installed their OS?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[rezalas]

First off, I think you read too far into some of my statements and this is possibly upsetting you a bit too much. I've been in this business for a while now, and believe me when I say that the last thing I want is to alienate my customers; in fact unlike many ISPs we don't even care if you are hosting a server from your home; we merely request (quite reasonably) that if your PC becomes infected you clean it for the safety of our other customers.

If you do on-site service then I'm certain you understand that whatever you have on your PC is your responsibility and thus making you liable for damages caused to others. By requesting our customers have their PC checked and cleaned/repaired by a professional on the SECOND (not first) offense we are attempting to help both the user (who may have been ignorant of the trouble being caused) and everyone else. If you noticed, I didn't state that we sniff packets or persecute them; we merely require that they be responsible users when accessing our network. Out of the possible hundred times I've done this not a single time did a user get angry; quite the contrary actually. I receive thank you letters (twice actually) or emails (a few) that they are happy we're looking out for them. As a service we also offer free antivirus to our customers upon request (though I usually suggest downloading something like Avast so they don't have to deal with licenses through us).

If you find our tactics heavy handed or obtrusive then I think you might have a skewed and excessively open expectation of what should be allowed on a network. In the end, no matter what people say about "net neutrality" and carrier immunity ISPs will still blackhole each other for not controlling their user base when it comes to attacks. I think the proactive approach we take with our customers is more personal and effective than other options out there.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

spare us your lame excuses and call it how it is; apart from Israel, it's one big freedom-hating, oppressive, sharia-law-loving, muslim shithole.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

but white people don't know how to party...

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[rezalas]

Not a bad idea actually... though many users can't seem to work a remote control properly, so using lynx is likely out of the question.

The third offense is really different depending on the circumstances. We'll usually take a more involved and personal approach to these, but if we don't get it resolved after this point we have no choice but to ask them to either control their systems or find other services. We send a tech out to their house to check for open wifi, extra PCs that they didn't clean, etc. I've only ever seen us terminate access for one person ever, and they refused to secure their Wifi or work with us at all to resolve the issue.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[witherstaff]

minorities? Alrighty, which GOP fund raiser should we crash.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

That is outrageous. If anyone ever cut my internet and refused to restore access based on that criteria, you'd be calling a lot more than the geeksquad or the genius bar.

There are FAR better ways of addressing that. I suspect your ISP will go extinct soon.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[leprkhn]

yeah, it's like shooting your kid in the head so that they stop getting beat up at school.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the UAE where a sub-caste of imported Asian labor, combined with redonkulous amounts of petroleum revenue, combine to make it into the a big freedom-hating, sharia-law-loving, ghetto fabulous muslim version of Las Vegas. Bling BLING, beyotch!

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[HAKdragon]

In fact, severa of my very computer-savvy friends have managed to infect their PCs [...] someone decided to infect the self-extracting .EXE file that extracted the multi-sgement .RAR files they downloaded.

Self-extracting RAR archives? Some free advice: The safe way to extract them is to open them in WinRAR and extract them like you would normal archives. That way if the self-extracting executable part is infected it won't affect your machine because you aren't ever running

He didn't say Self-extracting RAR archives. He said self extracting EXEs that come from multi-segmented RAR files. So no matter which tool use use to extract the EXE, it's still infected.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[discord5]

we require them to bring in a receipt showing they had their PC cleaned by professionals

Dear TechSupport,

My mother recently downloaded a smiley pack for MSN Messenger unaware of the predicament she was about to get into. I charged her dinner and had her do my laundry. Please consider this to be a receipt for said dinner and laundry, since the average local "professional" (that guy with the store that doesn't know the difference between a switch and a router) charges $200.00 for it.

Kind regards,
Your local geek

PS: Feel free to educate her on network security, because I've tried but her eyes glaze over after 5 minutes or the mention of the word "spyware" (whichever comes first).

Is it me or is your procedure (while a step in the right direction) just overly bureaucratic?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[rezalas]

It might seem that way, but there is really no better way. If you do nothing then you are screwed. If you do anything then someone will complain or find fault. The system we use is highly effective and we haven't had issues with it in the many years we've used it.

While the hypothetical issue people always use is one of the 11 year old knowing more than the 40 year old who runs a real shop does and yet charges excessive amounts seems to show an issue; the reality is that commonly the 11 year old got the virus downloading porn or MSN smiley packs from his friends, and the mother spends $50-$100 at a local shop getting it taken care of by a pro who notifies her of the issue (which she then punishes the child for). We all know the stories of the retarded shop tech who can't ID his own ass despite the zipcode the state has assigned it, but the reality is that most people who own a shop and charge reasonable rates (or even high rates) can do so because they are experienced and have good word of mouth business.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

AT&T doesn't block static account because......wait for it....they're for businesses that might want to host their own servers.

If you got an IP from a colo and they mentioned offhandidly that they were filtering certain ports you'd probably be pretty pissed. This is a no win for AT&T but they did what they can for the dynamics and that's the best they can do.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[clone53421]

You're probably right, but then he should have said "extracted FROM the multi-segment .RAR files".

You can create a multi-segment .RAR file, add a SFX module to the first part, and then have a self-extracting EXE (part1) plus a number of additional .RAR parts. I assumed that was what he meant, since he said it extracted the .RAR, not extracted FROM the .RAR. However, I've never seen a self-extracting multi-part .RAR, so your interpretation was probably correct.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 12 and what is this?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> They don't give a shit about hosting a zombie botnet. If they did,
> they'd cut their users, but that in turn would cause angry phone
> calls to their support center and a lot of canceled contracts.

More likely they'd have to stop collecting on a prorated rate per day each user was cut off. Back in the modem days, many localities passed such laws precisely because the calls to sign up were quickly answered, while the tech service calls were hours, leading to days and days of frustration.

$30/month is $1 per day x 2,000,000 = $2,000,000 per day, just to pull reasonable numbers out of my ass.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Khyber]

Check the edge of the network and totally cut off all traffic to the attacked server from the sources? Like a couple of smart network admins did just a few weeks ago with the whole 4th of July nonsense while the rest were scrambling for 'containment.'

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[amicusNYCL]

If I wanted to disallow AT&T users into a server, could I order a DDoS attack?

If you "order a DDoS attack" on a server, it's going to block access for a lot more than just AT&T users.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[pmc]

If you find our tactics heavy handed or obtrusive then I think you might have a skewed and excessively open expectation of what should be allowed on a network.

Not really - I just think you have a unwarranted faith in the effectiveness of antivirus products to prevent abberent behaviour. The best AV does not detect all malware, and no AV will do well against zeroday attacks. A better policy (for the clueless user who got themselves into the situation in the first place) would be to ensure that the machine is patched automatically, it has automatically updating antivirus software, and probably something against spyware installed too. Basically if you are going to take it upon youself to insist that the user installs security software (to the point of bringing in a receipt from a "professional") do it properly.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahahahahahaha, that is awesome dotgain.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[vivaelamor]

If IP source headers are spoofed to somewhere else, say to AT&T networks, it makes sense to filter them

... while allowing legitimate traffic through.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[vivaelamor]

Possibly the first sensible suggestion I've seen on this topic (from Slashdot at least). Still, you'd hope they could afford to buy some decent hardware capable of filtering this kind of stuff out based on the behaviour rather than the source.

Here's a report

from 2001 on the effectiveness of available hardware at filtering SYN packets. Eight years later, what excuse do they have?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be the professionals job :)

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[BikeHelmet]

Probably. That's the strategy that's been commonly employed for the last decade.

Look at it this way...
1) You let the DDoS go through, costing you money and bandwidth, and potentially bringing the target offline. This gives the target a headache and costs them money, too.
2) You block the DDoS, saving some money and bandwidth, but with heavy load on your own servers, and the same effect for users within your network. Target site does not go offline, which allows access to people connecting through other networks. It also allows your users to proxy in, if they need to.

Seems like the lesser of two evils. We should be praising them for saving our /b/, don't you think? :P

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Megane]

Well, duh. I switched over to routing my outbound mail through them years ago because I thought they might, then I never checked until recently when I was setting up SMTP auth so that my mom could have some sort of outgoing mail from her new laptop.

And not all their fixed IP customers are business customers, though they offer essentially the same product at the same price as their top-tier home service. Someday I'll check and see if they've ever started offering fixed IP with more than 6 mbits download through a U-verse connection, since I'm 500 feet from the pedestal. I just don't want the stupid pay TV; my antenna brings in nice DTV, including an out-of-market PBS station.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[TClevenger]

It's funny how ISP's are perfectly happy to "protect the network" by filtering Bittorrent and newsgroups, capping data usage and blocking port 25, but still allow spoofed packets (and spoofed email headers) out.

And since IRC is used for command and control of the majority of zombie machines, it might be a good idea to filter out IRC for the general public and make it "opt in" for those who actually need it.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

So the problem isn't AT&T, and the problem isn't really even the users (or more likely zombie bots) who are DDoSing AT&T, the real problem is the networks that are allowing the spoofed packets out. Because if you receive an IP packet from an end user with a source address that's not from your network, you should assume that it came from a new legitimate routing path and forward it right up. Because it's normal for your end users to set up crazy routing without even having an AS.

Strange routing isn't the only reason to have strange source addresses. For example, look at the design of I2P: All communications are in one direction through a given path. In other words, source addresses are totally uselesss because no one will ever be responding to the IP they receive from. Using UDP with sequence numbers and endpoint-to-endpoint acknowledgments would allow modifying the source address of every packet and would add security to the network, because no one would know the true source of any packets. But start dropping packets that aren't from your own subnets and users can't do this. It reduces the users' security. And what do they get in return? The knowledge that the next time somebody gets DDoS'd the IPs they see really do belong to a bunch of compromised PCs in the attacker's botnet?

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[mikkelm]

If you have time for trivialities like these, then you're either a very small ISP, or way overmanned.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with most of what you say, I really, really don't like the recent trend of ISPs blocking port 25. I've had my own mail server for years (always properly configured, it has never relayed a single spam mail), and it seems to become harder to keep using all the time.

Re:Before we act too hastily..

[Megane]

If your ISP is blocking outbound port 25, all you need to do is configure your mailer to forward to their server. For Sendmail, if your ISP's mail server doesn't require SMTP AUTH, just add one line defining SMART_HOST to your site's .mc file. Otherwise, you have to compile Sendmail with SASL support (which allows you to use inbound SMTP auth as well), and configure SMTP AUTH for outbound mail. (If you're one of those neanderthals who edit sendmail.cf directly, you should be hit over the head with the bat book.)

But if your ISP is blocking inbound port 25, they are stupid. There is no point in blocking inbound port 25 to customers, at least not for preventing spam or malware.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question comes down to, 1.) Is AT&T doing it to block /b/? 2.) Is it doing it to help stem the current tide of DDoS of 4chan.

Re:Why?

[Darkness404]

I think they say its number two, but that doesn't make any sense because the point of DDoS attacks are so you can't access the site, so what does AT&T do? Blocks the site.

Looks like the block was lifted

[yamamushi]

As of 1am CST, it looks like the block is beginning to be lifted : http://encyclopediadramatica.com/AT%26T_Blocks_4chan#THIS_JUST_IN I can confirm access to img.4chan.org open from the Austin/South Texas area now, whereas it wasn't about an hour ago.

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[Venim]

Sounds like they backed out pretty quickly. Probably the best move they could make (aside from not blocking 4chan in the first place).

As for the DDoS claim by them, i say FUD. /b/ was just as slow as it always is.

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[stox]

Same here. It was blocked since this afternoon, but is reachable now from AT&T DSL outside of Chicago.

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot... obviously there was a DOS going on. http://status.4chan.org/index.html#1567027617431107851

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[JWSmythe]

    Oh my gosh.. Not 4chan... What shall we do?

    Myself, I'm going on with my regular life, since I never went there anyways. :)

    But, since I was curious, I tried to go to their site from a Verizon FiOS line. Dead.

    This almost reminds me of the wonders of folks playing in IRC back in the day. One kid pisses off another kid, and suddenly folks are getting flooded off the network, and other various DoS attacks. SSDD.

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[Gravedigger3]

Its not about 4chan, its about censorship. By ignoring this kind of thing we would only let ATT know that they can get away with it. I never visit 4chan but if it turns out that ATT really was trying to censor them then this story deserves all the publicity it can get.

Of course if it really was just ATT's way of responding to a DDoS attack then perhaps everyone overreacted.

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are still on Standard Time down there?

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[Upphew]

Of course if it really was just ATT's way of responding to a DDoS attack then perhaps everyone overreacted.

Sure... then it was only DoS attack?

I think accepting DoS instead of DDoS no way a good trade.

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[wshs]

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

Now, I know it isn't "laws" per se, but it still applies. Censorship has to stop when it starts, not when it finally effects you.

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[JWSmythe]

    If 100,000 people walk down to a local store (say a Quick-i-Mart), walk up to the door, and knock on it without going in and doing anything else. This continues day in and day out for 3 months. The roads are blocked for miles all day every day, and every business for miles can't get any real customers in because of the others blocking the roads and sidewalks. Local residents can't get to or from their homes because of it. Would it be reasonable for the police to do something about it?

    I would think it would be reasonable, although odd, for the police to put out signs along the way to say "Quick-i-Mart is out of business, go away", and block the illegitimate traffic from going towards it.

    My friend hosts a lot of domains. The mail server was getting swamped with spam. Literally hundreds of thousands of spams an hour. I blackholed dozens of domains for email, which were idle. We were lucky that we could do it without effecting working accounts. To preserve the quality of service for most of the customers, we had to do this. From what I've read, this is what the situation was here too. It appeared to be a massive DDoS attack. To preserve the quality of service for the rest of the customers, unusual measures may have been taken.

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you rich?
 
I am pretty sure you are.
 
  Answer me; I need it, NEED IT.

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[JWSmythe]

    I don't quite get your little posts, even though you've been tagging them on my posts for a while now. What the hell are you on about?

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot my meds! Sorry!

Re:Looks like the block was lifted

[JWSmythe]

    The hospital called. They'd like you to come back. You really weren't suppose to leave in the first place, but I'm sure if you have a moment of clarity, you may know that.

Hooboy...

[IonOtter]

This is going to be beyond epic. There's going to be movies made about this a hundred years from now. (It'll be a comedy/tragedy either way, or more probably both)

Re:Hooboy...

[Anonymous Coward]

The movie will be banned in all 63 states for being approximately 2 hours of child porn strung together with scat jokes.

Re:Hooboy...

[anagama]

100 years from now? should be: "banned in all 6 states"

Re:Hooboy...

[tuxicle]

Will one of them be Iraq?

Re:Hooboy...

[Opportunist]

I already have a title for it: "4 teh lulz".

Re:Hooboy...

[JWSmythe]

    6 states? We have Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. What are the other three?

    I was completely thrown by that silly concept of 63 states. According to all the history books I've read, there have always been 3. I already verified this with the RecDep of Minitrue.

Re:Hooboy...

[anagama]

Mostly China.

Re:Hooboy...

[mqduck]

According to all the history books I've read, there have always been 3.

Yes, but what did those books say last week?

Re:Hooboy...

[JWSmythe]

    I'm sure they've always said the same thing as today. Who am I to believe any differently. If I have to guess between my own memory and the truth that Big Brother has been kind enough to share with me, I will always believe him, as my own memory may be flawed.

    You wouldn't believe differently, would you?
   

Re:Hooboy...

[mqduck]

One plus one is twERROR

Re:Hooboy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you rich? Your name and manner of speech seem to imply that you are.
 
  Answer me.

Re:Hooboy...

[goofyspouse]

*fires up his Kindle*

Hey...wait a minute...WTF?

Re:Hooboy...

[Anonymous Coward]

The other three are: Youarerich, Youarerich, and YOUARERICH!!!
 
Smythe is a rich man's name. Using the first and middle initials in lieu of a first name is a rich man's game.
 
Plus, you have always spoken (on Fark.com) about how you are rich.
 
Please, confirm this for me. Confirm it.

Re:Hooboy...

[JWSmythe]

    Good try.

    JWSmythe is an alias.

    I've never written on Fark.

    I cannot confirm nor deny anything.

    Have a nice day.

Re:Hooboy...

[JWSmythe]

    Friend, I suggest that you forget what you thought you read. You are mistaken. Nothing has changed. We all know what happens if you think otherwise.

What is the real problem?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

The question is whether 4chan is the real problem or the reaction to 4chan is. /b/ is what it is and has been for quite a while. And the American Southern culture also has roots that go back at least 300 years. So in a battle for legitimacy, which one should take precedence over the other?

We can talk about freedom of speech and such, but /b/ is home to content that is occasionally over the line illegal. On the other hand, only those who would actually seek it out would even know about it, so it doesn't make sense to "protect" the fair citizens of Hillbilly Valley by blocking the site.

Raymond Bradbury wrote about this in his seminal work Farenheit 451. Once we start allowing the minority to exert power over the majority in the name of fairness and protection, we lose a critical pillar of our society. Censorship is the first step, but later it will be outright censure.

Let's let that which is illegal stay illegal, and give everyone the benefit of full access, even if they don't want it. But I'm not from the South, so my cultural background doesn't lead me to the conclusion that censorship is better than freedom.

Re:What is the real problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a bad analogy for you regarding the illegal thing.

/b/ is like a convenience store, and some kids come in to start dealing drugs in the corner. Sure, as the owner, you have a good idea what's going on, and if you installed surveillance you could catch them, but you can't be assed. You kick 'em out of the store when you actually see them doing it, but otherwise you're not too concerned unless you get a complaint. Most content deemed questionable in my country (Australia) is removed within a few hours of being posted.

Anyway, tits or gtfo.

Re:What is the real problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck are you trying to imply? The inhabitants of the Southern United States are the ones who pontificate about sin, but they're first to go swill Jim Beam and then fuck their 14 year old cousins.

4chan's /b/ is on the tip of everybody's tongue. Its filthiest content isn't necessarily posted to satisfy sexual perversions, it's merely acknowledging the present state of the human condition. Its collective lies are the unadaulterated truth.

-- Ethanol-fueled, b& from posting more than once per 24 hours because there are a large number of religious pussfucks on Slashdot.

Re:What is the real problem?

[DurendalMac]

Get over yourself. Most people don't know what /b/ is, and people on /b/ post horrific, nasty shit simply for the shock value. It's a site full of maladjusted, misogynistic kids and little more.

Re:What is the real problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

ethanol fueled is losing karma fast because sometimes he gets drunk and forgets to click 'post anonymously' when he posts copypasta racist trolls. anyone who is arsed to see the truth can just look back a month or two and see them.

Re:What is the real problem?

[blackraven14250]

Ok, just pointing out why you're completely right, minorities have never been fucked over by majorities. There was never slavery anywhere in the world, the monks in Tibet get gifts of more food and gold than they can handle, the homeless have great cardboard homes, jews never got wholesale slaughtered, Microsoft doesn't ever try to fuck over Linux or competitors web browsers, whites in America don't have an advantage over everyone else, and trolls get listened to.

Oh, and every one of those things was legal.

Do you see the point where you just got called a motherfuckin moron? Hand in your human card, filth.

Re:What is the real problem?

[DerekLyons]

Raymond Bradbury wrote about this in his seminal work Farenheit 451. Once we start allowing the minority to exert power over the majority in the name of fairness and protection, we lose a critical pillar of our society. Censorship is the first step, but later it will be outright censure.

The interesting part is that you assume the South is the minority exerting power - when it can be easily argued that it is 4chan who is the minority exerting power. Look at what they did the Time top 100 list.
 

We can talk about freedom of speech and such, but /b/ is home to content that is occasionally over the line illegal. On the other hand, only those who would actually seek it out would even know about it

Kinda like the meth lab/crackhouse that used to be a few blocks over. It was on a cul-de-sac in a poor neighborhood that only those who sought such things would even know about. I suspect that's little comfort to the family who's daughter was killed in another part of town by one who did seek it out. In the physical world and the virtual world, the effects of a place can reach far beyond that place.
 
Mind you, I'm not suggesting 4chan should be censored, only that your arguments are logically suspect.
 
On a wider note, unrelated to the parent, I note that the denizens of 4chan (or at least some of them) wasted no time in finding out what was going on and leapt immediately to suggesting harassing AT&T and outright criminal acts (cutting fiber).

Re:What is the real problem?

[networkBoy]

I realize the point you're trying to make, but in the USA whites don't always have the advantage.
Specifically in the high tech industry, we are a minority (at least in my multinational company).
Our Co. is so hot to get "minorities" in the door that there is an almost overt reverse discrimination.
-nB

Re:What is the real problem?

[blackraven14250]

I mean, I don't know if you have a point, I've never been there. What I do know is that the country is undergoing a shift in demographics where whites will become the minority. Think whites won't get fucked over if and when that happens?

Net Neutrality

[SmarkWoW]

This is about Net Neutrality.

Sure Anonymous is angry about being blocked by 15.5% of internet users, but this is only the first step. Most responses to this blockage are directed toward fighting net neutrality, NOT Anon attacking AT&T because their site was blocked.

Anonymous is trying to fight this peacefully, they're not going to be DDoSing any DNS servers, backbone routers, or the like. They're going to be calling Customer Reps and complaining.

This is a Net Neutrality issue, not a Internet Hate Machine issue.

Thanks,
Smark
http://www.spectralcoding.com/

Re:Net Neutrality

[TheKidWho]

I don't think AT&T would care too much of the opinion of a group of 15 year olds.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Banzai042]

I really hope you're right, if anon responds in a mostly civil manner we could see the govt forced to take a stand on net neutrality. On the other hand if anon goes revenge happy on AT&T we could see this sort of block considered a "justifiable act".

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

First they came for the 4chan members, and I did not speak out,

because I did not want to be labeled a child molester.

Then they came for...

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Blocked for a portion (not all markets) of 15.5% of American Internet users

Re:Net Neutrality

[bipbop]

I have mod points, but I'm not using them, because there's no "-1 polite but very, very wrong" option.

To be more specific, I laughed pretty hard at "Anonymous is trying to fight this peacefully, they're not going to be DDoSing any DNS servers, backbone routers, or the like." They're not one person, and they're not a body directed by an individual, and no one controls what the assholes do, so the best you can do is "Some people are urging others not to, and they may or may not care". Good luck with that ;-)

Re:Net Neutrality

[Myuu]

I beg to differ, there is a difference between net neutrality and this, the larger issue of censorship.

Re:Net Neutrality

[SmarkWoW]

I'd just like to point you to a few links explicitly discouraging users from taking illegal actions against this:

ED Article Excerpts:
"1. DON'T FUCK WITH THE LAW- We want to first make use of the rights we have, censorship is violating our rights."
"Acting like an idiot and trying to DDoS them will only end with you being persecuted (and/or prosecuted), and your actions being used as a justification."
"This battle is one we have to fight legally..."
"DO NOT RAGE ON THESE PHONE NUMBERS, SIMPLY COMPLAIN ABOUT THE ISSUE!"

Insurgen Article
Excepts:
"Acting like a retard and trying to DDoS them will only end in them going [A QUOTE]"
"Don't try to DDoS or do ANYTHING illegal or legally ambiguous to AT&T. This is a corporation with more resources, manpower, and preparation than anything you script kiddies have ever dealt with. You will be caught and prosecuted. Go through legal channels and reverse this using legitimate means."

Those are just the ones in the windows I have open.

Obviously there is no way to force someone not to do something, but the intentions are to solve this without any "damages".

Thanks,
Smark
SpectralCoding

Re:Net Neutrality

[PrimaryConsult]

They'll care if their call center suddenly balloons to queues 30 deep of them. And if they are (as you say) 15 year olds, they most likely have no obligations in the morning to prevent them from calling in all night... But as said elsewhere, this wasn't a censorship issue anyway, so the point is, well, moot.

Re:Net Neutrality

[lgw]

I don't think AT&T would care too much of the opinion of a group of 15 year olds.

Only a complete moron would sell an entertainment pipeline into American homes and not care about the opinion of a group of 15 year olds! So, yeah, you're probably right.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Opportunist]

If you don't care about the opinion of people who have too much time on their hands, no life and you're the one who just took away the only thing that gave their life something resembling meaning, you have no call center.

Be aware who you're dealing with: People who have time to make you waste time. Time of your employees you have to pay by the hour. That costs money, and a load thereof. Don't underestimate the power of people with more time than you. Especially if being an expensive nuisance doesn't take too much skill.

Re:Net Neutrality

[MaskedSlacker]

OH GOD HOW DO I MOD THIS? Insightful....or funny...or insightful...or funny...or insightful...DEAR GOD WHAT DO I DO?????????1one

Re:Net Neutrality

[Opportunist]

Thinking about all the "internet vigilante groups" that exist, Anonymous is maybe one of the better organized and better "behaved" ones. Actually it surprises me that they haven't been labeled a terrorist group yet, they act coherently and are not under any government's control...

I think one of the reasons why this won't happen is that there's appearantly no "unspoken consensus" that DDoSing would be the right thing. You know, where you essentially say "stay within the law", but secretly everyone wished someone wouldn't. Anonymous is, like most of similar groups, very heavy on peer esteem and peer approval/recognition. Doing what is the general consensus of what's "right" rises your "rank", doing something stupid will lower it, to the point where you will be cast out.

As long as the general population of Anonymous will view it as stupid to launch a full blown DDoS attack against anyone, it will stay calm. Launching a DDoS requires resources the average hotheat might not necessarily have. It takes a wee bit of sophistication (or enough money to buy/rent a botnet), something you won't invest if the chance to piss off the people you want to impress is pretty high.

Once the general consensus changes, take cover.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Davemania]

Yes they would be, considering it would be their parent paying for it.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Jurily]

Troll. That way the reader must decide for themselves.

Re:Net Neutrality

[TuaAmin13]

Actually it surprises me that they haven't been labeled a terrorist group yet

Actually, they have

Re:Net Neutrality

[Opportunist]

Ok, so the label terrorist now officially means "any group not under government control"? Just checking, don't want to end up being in a terrorist group because my local group of garden gnome enthusiasts haven't filed for official club status...

Re:Net Neutrality

[bipbop]

As in http://www.freewebs.com/gnomemansland/gnometerroristcells.htm? I'd watch your step, terr'ist.

Re:Net Neutrality

[dublindan]

Besides what the other replies to parent have already stated, the only thing left unsaid is that a large portion of /b/ users are not actually 15 year olds at all. I know a good few /b/tards myself and most are in the 19-13 age range, and most of them are NOT in fact unemployed either. Personally, I don't give a crap if /b/ is taken down, but plenty of other people seem to, so best not annoy them TOO much.

Re:Net Neutrality

[DurendalMac]

Um, have you seen the threads on 4chan about this? Anon is going to fight this peacefully? Yeah, okay, sure, if by "peacefully" you mean "Make fake news stories that the AT&T CEO died to drop their stock price", then yeah.

Re:Net Neutrality

[DurendalMac]

"Better behaved"? Maybe when it comes to a very large corporate behemoth like AT&T, but when it comes to, say, Adam Goldstein, they'll make someone's life absolute hell. How about porno-bombing Youtube? DDoSes against websites they just happen to not like? Anon may not be the worst internet vigilante groups, but don't kid yourself. Anon is comprised mostly of maladjusted, misogynistic kids. And since Anonymous is, well, anonymous, you don't get "cast out" without being b&.

Re:Net Neutrality

[TheKidWho]

Isn't 15 just about the average of 13-19?? (No it's 16)

Regardless, laborers at that age group are inherently disposable, who cares if they whine? There are other teens looking for jobs too.

Do the /b/tards scare you? Do you actually think they could do anything of significance?? Most of them will just write strongly worded opinions backed by uninteresting and brain numbing 4chan memes.

Re:Net Neutrality

[DurendalMac]

Um, no, it's because Anon has deliberately terrorized people before (calling in with death threats is something they've been known to do), so they get the label. Kinda silly, but the definition does fit.

Re:Net Neutrality

[need4mospd]

I'm really confused by the typing of "one" after the question mark. Can someone explain that to me????????///forwardslash

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

I think AT&T will care about several million of them tying up their customer service lines, and probably every AT&T-related phone number they can get their grubby mitts on. Anon are not known for their tact, subtlety, or common sense.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing, since you replied.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Dragonslicer]

If this is about Net Neutrality, than what service does AT&T provide or partner with that competes with 4chan? The point of Net Neutrality is that ISP's can't favor their own services or the services of some paying partner over a competing service. Messages like this, written by allegedly knowledgeable people, are what confuse laymen about Net Neutrality.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Thiez]

He probably meant 19-31 instead of 19-13.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

The preceeding one is the more confusing. The numeral, '1', should be typed out, 'one', for small numbers. That's the proper way!

Re:Net Neutrality

[dctoastman]

I do enjoy the part where they admit that they face a superior force on every front.
I kind of wish that they would try to go after AT&T. These guys need a good, swift kick in the ass to get their humility in check.

Re:Net Neutrality

[blackraven14250]

Employees who are there to sit around and wait for calls anyway. It doesn't cost them nearly as much as you think.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Thinking about all the "internet vigilante groups" that exist, Anonymous is maybe one of the better organized and better "behaved" ones.

Better organized? Part of the beauty of Anonymous the "group" is that there is (in theory) not only no leader, there is no organization, or really even a cause. Back when the whole scientology wankery was going on the requirement (if you could call it that) to be a part of Anonymous was that you agreed with their cause. The downside of that definition is that there was no central cause. Some people wanted to destroy scientology forever, by whatever means. Some people wanted to educate the masses about the danger they present to peoples mental health. Some people wanted to educate the masses about the people who have been lost to the so called church. Some people wanted to get their tax-exempt status removed. Some people just wanted to row row fight the powa and rally. But the upside of that definition is that if at any point you agreed with any of those wants, you were Anonymous.

The same thing goes for this. If it just ended up being a DDoS, it will all likely blow over as nothing. But if it ended up being something else, then (from specific -> general) if you are against blocking /b/, or against blocking 4chan, or a proponent of net neutrality, or against the censorship of websites, or against censorship, or against being told what you can and cannot see/do/be, then you are part of Anonymous. And though the idea of a few people angry about a service or wrongdoing is not intimidating, the concept of a large group of people fighting for their rights in whatever little way is. Its when you stop being anonymous, and become Anonymous, that you become Legion, that you stop forgiving, that you stop forgetting, and that you live and fight for what you believe in.

But organized? No, Anonymous is not organized, because there really is no Anonymous. There is everyone and what they believe in. Every once in a while they become Anonymous. The anti-scientology movement was Anonymous. The Iranian protestors were Anonymous. Now the net neutrality movement is Anonymous. And Anonymous is power. Don't forget that, because we won't.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Boxxy. Apparently a bunch of utter losers tried to go to her house to talk to her or some such thing, failing to realize that any sane person hides under the bed (or loads a shotgun) when a bunch of dorks from the Internet come looking for you. They did manage to find an ex-boyfriend of hers, who had the good sense not to disclose whether he'd had sex with her.

I like some of what they've done against Scientology, but most of the rest of it is rather lame.

Re:Net Neutrality

[david_thornley]

There's a legal concept of terror, which is taking actions intended to frighten people, like death threats. Then there's the "terrorism" idea of state-sponsored or quasi-governmental organizations trying to cause international terror to further geopolitical aims. There's quite a bit of similarity, but they're obviously not the same thing.

The confusion between the two is largely because it's convenient for the powers-that-be to treat brutal punks like they were highly trained al-Qaida commandos, particularly because they can claim that throwing the book at a punk is a win for anti-terrorism measures.

Re:Net Neutrality

[TheKidWho]

Anonymous Coward, you overestime their "power." I doubt there are millions of unique 4chan visitors, let alone millions willing to tie up AT&Ts customer service lines. Let's not even go into the fact that only 15% of those "millions" even use AT&T for their broadband.

Re:Net Neutrality

[darpo]

Neither. Since you posted, you cannot mod now.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys need a good, swift kick in the ass to get their humility in check.

Says the person who links to their Twitter page in their sig.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is the same as in a guerrilla war, though. Who is "anonymous"? The population of the group, both in number and individual participation, varies widely depending on the "cause" and the time of year. There's no one to "kick in the ass" because, by and large, there's no centralized command structure from one incident to the next.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Knara]

Anonymous has an interesting, inconsistent filtering mechanism for the causes it chooses to champion (the only consistent cause that will be taken up is if someone acts against 4chan or /b/ itself). There's people who post asking for anonymous' help on a daily basis, which are met with replies of "(anonymous or /b/) is not your personal army". Any given incident is likely to feature entirely different groups of individuals, with entirely different ranges of skills.

Re:Net Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

Fellow dundrwhatever, your lame copypasta is lame. Try to come up with some creative way to badmouth anonymous, something that have never been said before. "misogynistic" I bet you're a father/mother that happened to found out that your daughter is HOOKED into /b/ AND SHE LIKES IT. It's really not /b/'s fault that you spent more time in church that to listening her.. so bad, she posted tits, she's ours. gotta love these moral wackos.

Re:Net Neutrality

[MassacrE]

Sounds like a cross between 'A-Team' and 'Whose Line is it Anyway?'

Re:Net Neutrality

[dublindan]

Ok, so I can't type. Whatever. I of course meant 18-23.

Re:Net Neutrality

[dublindan]

I couldn't care less about /b/tards, I just meant that these are people who have money and blocking sites the like to visit shouldn't be something a telco company does to its customers. Obviously the people I know aren't on AT&T, since I'm in Ireland, but I assume that similarly aged and employed people exist in affected areas too. If not, ignore my comment.

When I read the headline...

[AJ_Levy]

Why did I get the feeling that this ain't gonna end well for AT&T?

ITT

[Anonymous Coward]

inb4 at&t hack

Simmer Down Now.

[ibaboon]

The block is gone. It was for 4chans own good. They have been DDoSed for weeks. AT&T just stopped access for a short bit. Settle the heck down.

Re:Simmer Down Now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it can't be bad if it's for their protection, right?

Re:Simmer Down Now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you -seen- /b/tards in action? Those guys keep pitchforks and torches in their (moms') cars by the caseful. Might as well give the bulls in Pamplona a mild, well-reasoned talking-to for all the good it'd do.

Posted anon for the irony and cuz I don't want them to DDOS me.

Re:Simmer Down Now.

[Anonymous Coward]

For their own good? No, it was for the rest of the internet's good.

Re:Simmer Down Now.

[elrous0]

I guess the Scientologists are hitting back, since their usual tactics of "sue and intimidate" don't seem to be working.

Re:Simmer Down Now.

[fulldecent]

>> The block is gone. It was for 4chans own good. They have been DDoSed for weeks. AT&T just stopped access for a short bit.

>> Settle the heck down.
Please provide link to full disclosure from AT&T

Re:Simmer Down Now.

[vivaelamor]

The block is gone. It was for 4chans own good. They have been DDoSed for weeks. AT&T just stopped access for a short bit. Settle the heck down.

What sort of attack was it that stopping access helped 4chan? From what I've read so far I thought it was a spoofed SYN attack aimed at 4chan with AT&T as the spoofed addresses. Your scenario does not fit this at all.

Really it should never be necessary to block legitimate traffic if you have sufficient hardware to filter your link. I would expect any ISP but especially one as big as AT&T to have hardware capable of filtering out DOS attacks at a rate equal to their links capacity. The only issue should be if you have insufficient bandwidth on a link outside your network and that is something you have limited control over anyway certainly not a sufficient excuse in itself to block rather than filter.

"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[countertrolling]

Maybe it might have been a good idea to wait on posting this until a bit more info came in? Or is this part of the show? I'm preheating the microwave now to prep some popcorn.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[enoz]

I'm preheating the microwave now to prep some popcorn.

Preheating the Microwave? Do you use tinfoil or lightbulbs?

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so much a hoax, I think it's a few AT&T employees trying to curb a DDoS using their best judgement with whatever means they have available. But in a half-assed sort of way that backfires if it pisses people off.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[countertrolling]

Well that makes no sense. AT&T should be taking no action unless somebody from 4chan calls them up and asks them to block the perceived source of the DDoS.. if that's what's happening. The whole thing sounds goofy. Maybe somebody at Slashdot is looking for a scoop which might backfire against him if it turns out to be fake. Credibility is a fickle mistress...or something like that...

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[Opportunist]

Uranium rods, like any sane person.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[Anonymous Coward]

if I were given to dreaming about hoaxes, I might consider that the underlying cause could be to get the voices of Anonymous on tape.

I mean it would only help if Att were giving the "white" hats unfettered access to the kitchens.

I mean honestly, a last bastion of anonymity...calling customer service to biznitch.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[FireFury03]

Well that makes no sense. AT&T should be taking no action unless somebody from 4chan calls them up and asks them to block the perceived source of the DDoS..

Sounds like you don't understand what's going on - please educate yourself.

4chan is being SYN flooded, various ISPs were getting a lot of collateral traffic from the resulting ACKs going back to spoofed IPs. Since those ISPs had nothing to do with either the attacker or 4chan, there was nothing they could do but pull the plug on the source of the collateral ACKs (4chan). i.e. the ISPs who blocked 4chan weren't trying to protect 4chan from an attack, they were protecting their own networks from the fallout.

Sadly, like you, the vast majority of users are clueless and won't investigate to see what is only going on. I'm sure there will be a kneejerk reaction against AT&T and the other ISPs who tried to protect themselves and everyone will make out that they are the bad guys.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[shentino]

A DDoS against someone else can still chew up YOUR bandwidth.

Maybe the attack got AT&T's tubes clogged up, and the block was drano.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[vivaelamor]

there was nothing they could do but pull the plug on the source of the collateral ACKs

You were doing so great until this bit. Or I hadn't realised that one of the biggest ISPs in the USA lacked the capability to do something as simple as filtering out unwanted ACKs.

You were certainly right about there being a knee-jerk reaction, pity it appears to be yours.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[FireFury03]

You were doing so great until this bit. Or I hadn't realised that one of the biggest ISPs in the USA lacked the capability to do something as simple as filtering out unwanted ACKs.

That discussion appears to address 2 separate problems, both in infeasible ways:

1. Rejecting unsolicited ACKs - "SYN+ACK -> (check if your network requested it) -> (if yes) -> then -> ALLOW -> else (REJECT)":
It doesn't really expand on a method of doing this, but usually you would use connection tracking, whereby you remember the state of all connections running through the router. This is a pretty resource intensive setup and is nigh on unworkable in networks with asymmetric or non-deterministic routing. I.e. it isn't something that I would expect an ISP as big as AT&T to be able to implement, especially at the drop of a hat. Sure, it's easy enough to do on your home network, but it just ain't going to work at the ISP level without some *serious* effort.

2. Prevention of SYN floods by proxying the connection initialisation:
The method described here will lead to you being able to connect to *any* server, even if it isn't accepting connections. Only once the connection is fully established will the real server be contacted, whereupon you may well discover that the server doesn't accept connections on that port, or doesn't even exist. If my ISP pulled that kind of stunt, I'd be finding a new ISP as soon as possible and I would be advising my customers to do the same because messing with network traffic like that is going to cause all sorts of "weird shit" problems, cause software to use incorrect error messages when reporting failures and generally make debugging network issues absolute hell.

Both of the above methods also suffer from the exact same problem that SYN cookies were invented to prevent - namely, there is a device on the network which has to remember the status of all the pending connections which may have been started by spoofed packets. Sure, your firewall is protecting the real server from seeing these spoofed packets, but the firewall itself will collapse under the load of tracking millions of half-open connections from an attacker.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[vivaelamor]

It doesn't really expand on a method of doing this, but usually you would use connection tracking, whereby you remember the state of all connections running through the router. This is a pretty resource intensive setup and is nigh on unworkable in networks with asymmetric or non-deterministic routing. I.e. it isn't something that I would expect an ISP as big as AT&T to be able to implement, especially at the drop of a hat. Sure, it's easy enough to do on your home network, but it just ain't going to work at the ISP level without some *serious* effort.

It doesn't expand because there is nothing to expand on unless you're filtering all packets rather than only those that have been identified as potentially spurious traffic. Yes, you block potentially legitimate SYN+ACK packets but considering this is a web host we're talking about.. when is the server going to be initiating connections? The point is, it is still blocking all the unwanted traffic through that link while still allowing people to access the site. Issues about asymmetric routing are more applicable to the proxy approach, the only effect it has on rejecting unsolicited ACKS is limited to connections determined to be potential flood targets. The same connections that AT&T blocked anyway.

The method described here will lead to you being able to connect to *any* server, even if it isn't accepting connections. Only once the connection is fully established will the real server be contacted, whereupon you may well discover that the server doesn't accept connections on that port, or doesn't even exist. If my ISP pulled that kind of stunt, I'd be finding a new ISP as soon as possible and I would be advising my customers to do the same because messing with network traffic like that is going to cause all sorts of "weird shit" problems, cause software to use incorrect error messages when reporting failures and generally make debugging network issues absolute hell.

Again, why would you filter all traffic with this rule? You first identify a problem host and its target then you apply an appropriate filter rule. The advantage of this option over the first is you do not lose any legitimate traffic in either direction at the cost of load on the router. Anyone complaining about unexpected behaviour should be thankful that they aren't being rejected outright. The biggest disadvantage is likely to be as you pointed out before, that the rule is unsuitable for asymmetric routing.

Both of the above methods also suffer from the exact same problem that SYN cookies were invented to prevent - namely, there is a device on the network which has to remember the status of all the pending connections which may have been started by spoofed packets. Sure, your firewall is protecting the real server from seeing these spoofed packets, but the firewall itself will collapse under the load of tracking millions of half-open connections from an attacker.

Geez, you think hardware is the limiting factor? Are you living in 2001 ?. Of course none of the solutions are 100% perfect, if they were then they would have probably been a standard part of TCP/IP anyway. The goal in these situations is to limit the damage and that is apparently something that AT&T were incapable or unwilling to do. I'm just barely a layperson in these matters and I can spot the many flaws in their approach. If it wasn't their own customers access they were restricting then I'd agree that there is no obligation to do what is technically possible over what is easiest.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[FireFury03]

It doesn't expand because there is nothing to expand on unless you're filtering all packets rather than only those that have been identified as potentially spurious traffic.

Huh? Presumably by "potentially spurious traffic" you mean any SYN+ACK packets coming from the server that is being attacked? How are you going to identify which of those are legit and which aren't? You _do_ need to expand on this because frankly it is not clear how you would do this, given the problems I have already explained.

Yes, you block potentially legitimate SYN+ACK packets but considering this is a web host we're talking about.. when is the server going to be initiating connections?

The server is unlikely to be initiating connections. However, that is irrelevant since blocking SYN+ACK packets that the server sent would stop it *accepting* connections, not making them (and is exactly what the ISPs have been doing which you are complaining about!)

The point is, it is still blocking all the unwanted traffic through that link while still allowing people to access the site.

No... no it isn't - your choice is to either block *all* the SYN+ACK packets (and hence prevent anyone from connecting to the server) or somehow identify which are the legitimate ones and block everything else. The latter "solution" is something that you seem to think is easy but have failed to expand on how it could reasonably be done. All you have done is a bit of handwaving and stated that there is "nothing to expand" upon.

Issues about asymmetric routing are more applicable to the proxy approach

Wrong. The only way you are going to work out which SYN+ACK packets are legitimate is by watching the SYN packets leaving your network and then somehow distributing that information across all the routers that the SYN+ACK packets might take to enter your network. This is easy where you have symmetric routing since no distribution needs to be done, but in the case of asymmetric routing it is a hard problem.

Both of the above methods also suffer from the exact same problem that SYN cookies were invented to prevent - namely, there is a device on the network which has to remember the status of all the pending connections which may have been started by spoofed packets. Sure, your firewall is protecting the real server from seeing these spoofed packets, but the firewall itself will collapse under the load of tracking millions of half-open connections from an attacker.

Geez, you think hardware is the limiting factor?

Actually, yes. At the bandwidths you're talking about, you have to track a very large number of connections and look them up at extremely high speeds.

I'm just barely a layperson in these matters

It certainly shows. I'm a professional freelance network security consultant and software developer.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but you appear to have seen someone saying "this is a solution" and accepted it more or less at face value rather than thinking it through to the logical conclusions and seeing why it is flawed and largely unworkable. This may be because you haven't had a lot of experience about how large networks, and the internet at large, work - I don't know.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[vivaelamor]

Huh? Presumably by "potentially spurious traffic" you mean any SYN+ACK packets coming from the server that is being attacked? How are you going to identify which of those are legit and which aren't? You _do_ need to expand on this because frankly it is not clear how you would do this, given the problems I have already explained.

I would suggest you read about Stateful Packet Inspection, I am quite at a loss to know why you are not already aware that it is a standard feature in firewalls these days. As for how do you recognise which packets to apply a rule to, you could start by the method you used to identify packets to block.. eg the host and destination. Depending on the attack pattern you could narrow the scope from there.

The server is unlikely to be initiating connections. However, that is irrelevant since blocking SYN+ACK packets that the server sent would stop it *accepting* connections, not making them (and is exactly what the ISPs have been doing which you are complaining about!)

Admittedly I got SYN+ACK the wrong way round but the point stands that they should be using some sort of connection tracking to make it irrelevant. To expand on that, they should be using connection tracking specifically on connections which have been identified either by host or target. The method to identify these could even be the same they used for blocking the SYN+ACK packets (IE, manually).

Wrong. The only way you are going to work out which SYN+ACK packets are legitimate is by watching the SYN packets leaving your network and then somehow distributing that information across all the routers that the SYN+ACK packets might take to enter your network. This is easy where you have symmetric routing since no distribution needs to be done, but in the case of asymmetric routing it is a hard problem.

Which should be accounted for when you design the network not when you are faced with an attack. You already give one possible solution (shared state tables) but there are other options to at least limit the effect of stateful packet inspection in asymmetric environments.

Regardless, asymmetric routing problems are limited to the connections you apply the rules to so if you lack the ability to do a perfect system you can still filter the traffic more effectively than a complete block.

Actually, yes. At the bandwidths you're talking about, you have to track a very large number of connections and look them up at extremely high speeds.

Yes, you would, wouldn't you? Care to 'expand' on how routers that can handle over 5.5Gbps of stateful inspection aren't up to the task? Consider the nature of the attack and that should be plenty. 4chan was getting potentially bandwidth raped by the DDOS, I somehow doubt the traffic 4chan would be able to send out in SYN+ACK would make AT&T's routers blink if they were set up properly. You shouldn't need to even track all connections, only the ones from 4chan.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but you appear to have seen someone saying "this is a solution" and accepted it more or less at face value rather than thinking it through to the logical conclusions and seeing why it is flawed and largely unworkable. This may be because you haven't had a lot of experience about how large networks, and the internet at large, work - I don't know.

And you appear to lack imagination or just couldn't be arsed to do a job properly, touche.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, like you, the vast majority of users are clueless and won't investigate to see what is only going on.

How long has it been since you last beat your wife? Seriously, you got issues.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[countertrolling]

...won't investigate to see what is only going on.

Wouldn't dream of it. Nope. Not me. Never never never...

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[countertrolling]

Yeah I saw other posts in the threads, and other articles that explain it all. It was one of the reasons I made the original comment about the story being posted a bit early before more info became available. I still kinda think an audio link between AT&T and 4chan could have been established before any blocking action had taken place. Maybe the attempt was made...don't know.

Re:"Could this all be a hoax...?"

[FireFury03]

I would suggest you read about Stateful Packet Inspection, I am quite at a loss to know why you are not already aware that it is a standard feature in firewalls these days.

I am aware - I already mentioned it (aka connection tracking). I also already pointed out why it is completely infeasible to do this. Please go back and read the previous posts in the thread.

Admittedly I got SYN+ACK the wrong way round but the point stands that they should be using some sort of connection tracking to make it irrelevant.

Again, please go back and read the previous posts in the thread - I already explicitly explained to you why connection tracking is not feasible. You are proposing solutions and ignoring all the reasons why they are unworkable, even when clearly explained to you.

The method to identify these could even be the same they used for blocking the SYN+ACK packets (IE, manually).

Manually? are you crazy? Unwired said they were getting 1Gbps of collateral traffic - that equates to about 7.8 million SYN+ACK packets per second, how are you going to manually filter those?

Which should be accounted for when you design the network not when you are faced with an attack.

You really don't understand how large scale IP routing works I'm afraid. You're dealing with enormous networks that have multiple redundant routes via multiple peers and transits over which you have limited control. You cannot design a network that big and redundant so that it can reasonably have the connection tracking that you are suggesting.

You already give one possible solution (shared state tables)

I wasn't really suggesting that as a solution, I was providing it as an example of how any "solution" is utterly unworkable. Shared state tables would require an inordinate amount of internal network bandwidth, would be highly vulnerable to attach and the inherent race conditions would be extremely problematic. The cure would be far worse than the disease.

Care to 'expand' on how routers that can handle over 5.5Gbps of stateful inspection aren't up to the task?

Aside from the aforementioned problems of sharing that amount of state data between the border routers, I'm sure you can agree that AT&T handle orders of magnitude more data than 5.5Gbps.

And you appear to lack imagination or just couldn't be arsed to do a job properly, touche.

No, I just have enough experience to know that your "solutions" are unworkable for many reasons. In AT&T's position I probably would have done exactly the same thing, given the immense problems associated with any "solution" - I don't believe the solutions you are suggesting to be remotely workable, especially not when they are having to be implemented at the drop of a hat.

Idiots

[dbcad7]

while some others suggest more drastic action (like cutting AT&T fiber)

And eliminate ANY kind of access for themselves, and others who could care less about their problems.. Just as smart as having riots, burning down the grocery stores and then having no place to buy food.. Destruction as a form of protest only hurts themselves and other innocents.

Re:Idiots

[DerekLyons]

Nobody ever claimed the /b/tards were smart. Clever, created, talent, energetic - sure. But not smart.

Re:Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.occupiedlondon.org/20theses

Note especially theses 2 - 5.

Re:Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the point if cutting fibre is simply to send the message "don't fuck with us". To me it sounds effective; ATT will think twice before trying this shit if they lose a few million worth if fibre.

Re:Idiots

[foniksonik]

Depends on the scenario... this of course is not the right one, but there are times in war when destroying your own infrastructure is the best option to keep the enemy from subverting it for themselves.

Re:Idiots

[Fex303]

Destruction as a form of protest only hurts themselves and other innocents.

"Other innocents"?

You've never actually visited /b/, have you?

Re:Idiots

[mdwh2]

No source is given for this "more drastic action". If it happened at all, the weasel-worded "some others suggest" suggests to me that it could just be some random individual who posted; there is no evidence to suggests there is any kind of consensus, or even if this was a serious suggestion in the first place.

It would be like judging Slashdot based on what some trolls here occasionally post. But don't let me stop you with your straw man.

Re:Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a lot more innocents may be lost now.

why was rule 1 ever before?

Re:Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody ever claimed the /b/tards were smart. Clever, created, talent, energetic - sure. But not smart.

And here I thought "clever" and "smart" meant the same thing.

Re:Idiots

[NotOverHere]

This reminds me of a movie I was watching as heard about this:

"Mongo, is so much a who as a what", "Yeah, what he said"

I hadn't even visited /b/ in a while. Then I did.

I was like LoL, then I threw up a little, then I was like LoL.

Re:Idiots

[Ash-Fox]

And here I thought "clever" and "smart" meant the same thing.

I think "clever" is what you say to "special children".

Re:Idiots

[DurendalMac]

No, AT&T would sue and prosecute the living fuck out of anyone who tried and probably crack down harder on 4chan. Don't underestimate their lobbying power.

Re:Idiots

[leighton]

Nah. One can be clever without being smart; consider a person who possesses a superficial wit, an aptitude for puns, and a tendency to pull clumsy yet effective pranks. Alternatively, consider a person who always manages to land on his feet, can bafflegab his way out of any situation, and who manages to survive no matter what gaffes he commits. Such people may not be terribly bright, but they *are* clever.

Feynman was clever and smart. Noam Chomsky is smart (just going by his work on linguistics and leaving politics aside) but not particularly clever. Lots of politicians are clever but not smart--I'd put both W Bush and Sarah Palin in this category. (No doubt there are Democrats too, but I can't think of any at the moment. Biden, maybe, but I don't think he's particularly clever. Barney Frank?)

Re:Idiots

[discord5]

Nobody ever claimed the /b/tards were smart. Clever, created, talent, energetic - sure. But not smart.

I've come to think of 4chan as a modern version those monkeys with the typewriters. I've yet to see one of Shakespeare's works appear.

and nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

ITT: an AT&T tech fucks up, /b/ goes down for an hour, and dipshits around the world cry about how the sky is falling

>facepalm.jpg

Obligatory XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

AT&T should just hire Stephenie Meyer in future to take care of 4chan.

hrm

[Blice]

First they came for the pedophiles, and I did not speak out, because I was not a pedophile.

Then, they came for the pirates, and I did not speak out because I was not a pirate.

Then they came for anonymous, and I did not speak out because I was not anonymous.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Re:hrm

[QX-Mat]

like

Wrong way

[gmuslera]

There are smarter ways to disable 4chan, like this one

Re:Wrong way

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that /b/ waltzed through that right? It even changed its title (as it does from time to time) to welcome the vampire wannabes.

It doesn't matter what you do to /b/ you can't poison it. It's already so steeped in poison, everyone in there is immune. Send all the vampires, cultists, hippies, zealots and racists you like, it doesn't even dent /b/. Most likely some of them will just get converted, and swell the numbers.

Re:Wrong way

[DurendalMac]

It's like pissing into a sea of piss.

Re:Wrong way

[Anonymous Coward]

/b/ waltzed through xkcd posting a 4chan related comic. Not surprising; xkcd's entire fan base is probably around the same size as /b/, and most of them wouldn't even bother trying to enact the comic.

Would it be able to survive the hordes of Twilight fans, though, in a scenario where Meyer really tried to egg them on? That's much more doubtful - Twilight is a truly mainstream thing and numbers-wise would easily dominate both xkcd and 4chan. By multiple orders of magnitude.

Re:Wrong way

[clone53421]

Do I know you?

Re:Wrong way

[dctoastman]

Exactly. The "legions" of XKCD fans who would willfully troll /b/ is insignificant to the honest number of Twilight fans out there. Considering the book has sold over 1 million copies, was 16% of all books sold in the first quarter of this year, and the movie has taken in close to $400 million worldwide /b/ would not know what hit them. /b/ thinks they are random, disturbing, and whimsical. They have yet to meet the tweens.

Re:Wrong way

[icsx]

That comic as in reply to a solution in every news comments is seriously overrated.

this is what's going to happen

[ILuvRamen]

I guarantee they're going to pull an "operation squirrel." That's where you cut tons of fibre with a dull tool so it looks chewed but you do so much that they know it was on purpose. People do that more than you think.

Re:this is what's going to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm sure "they" will do just that, Mr. Crazy Hobo on the Bus.

Re:this is what's going to happen

[Xelios]

I think you're confusing what you want to see happen with what actually will. Contrary to popular belief, most of the people over at 4chan aren't terrorists, I very much doubt they'll do anything IRL that might get them into serious legal trouble. Even if the chance of being caught is next to nothing, cutting someone's fiber is a few steps beyond what they normally do. Some of the smarter people there have already realized the best way to fight this is through legal means, calling their support lines, writing them, getting the story to various news organizations etc.

Though it doesn't help that most of 4chan is inaccessible right now, due to (I would guess) another DDoS attack.

Re:this is what's going to happen

[dargaud]

"Operation squirrel": spread peanut butter on your targets...

Re:this is what's going to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Sexy!

Re:this is what's going to happen

[IonOtter]

I guarantee they're going to pull an "operation squirrel."

That happens far more than you may realize. The San Jose attack was a pretty big one. We had about a dozen OC-192 outage tickets open on that, and we were just riders on that line. Turns out it was cut, quite deliberately, with a hacksaw. Neat and clean as you please. It was also cut in a place where it would be easy to repair. They could have cut them off where they come into the manholes and CEVs, but they cut them at the junctions, where there's plenty of slack.

The article also fails to mention that it was a very precise and coordinated strike. They knew exactly where to go, exactly which manholes to get into, and precisely which cables to cut and where, all within a 2 hour period. It also fails to mention very similar attacks that happened in Baltimore that same week. Those "vandals" were even meaner, cutting cables that had no markings and went under a railroad bridge over the Chesapeake. In several places.

Someone was sending a message. Well, we got the message, and I haven't heard anything regarding the one that was sent back.

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

epic epic for the weeeen lol teh caek iz a lie!11 XD

The Rules?

[Bazman]

Someone broke rule 1 and rule 2 here. Slashdot post ending in 69 does rule 34 on timothy NAO!! Ahma chargin my slashdot layzars! CmdrTaco is now a meme. Ummm. Over 9000?

Honestly, was the phrase "and nothing of value was lost" ever more appropriate?

Re:The Rules?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI the rules only apply to raids.

Re:The Rules?

[Anonymous Coward]

wat

Re:The Rules?

[Anonymous Coward]

Newfags can't triforce.

Ââ-
â-â-

Re:The Rules?

[indi0144]

"and nothing of value was lost"

I value the ability to laugh @ humanity for the creative and clever ways to illustrate the moral decadence of the society.. inb4 tl;dr -- I value anything that can make me laugh.

But I guess if AT&ampT goes down something "more" valuable would be lost, right?

nao, tis or gtfo!

Re:The Rules?

[Bazman]

Y'all slashdotters posting in a troll thread!

Srsly.

Re:The Rules?

[mdwh2]

"and nothing of value was lost"

I don't really care about this site, but that's the classic code for anyone in favour of censorship - "But what need does society have for this?" they'll cry.

I never thought I'd see the day when there was so much support for censorship on Slashdot. I guess next time Scientology get Slashdot to censor a post, other people can say "nothing of value was lost", right?

Re:The Rules?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only newfags think the rules only apply to raids.

Re:The Rules?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was I the only person who loled when the news broke about the stock market going over 9000?

You know what destroys a sites credibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting something in the likes of asking your audience to sabotage the network infrastructure.

Funny how some stuff gets rushed to the front page, I don't think Digg was gullible enough to get that even close to front page.

Re:You know what destroys a sites credibility?

[ZiakII]

Posting something in the likes of asking your audience to sabotage the network infrastructure.

Funny how some stuff gets rushed to the front page, I don't think Digg was gullible enough to get that even close to front page.

http://digg.com/tech_news/AT_T_blocks_4chan

Re:You know what destroys a sites credibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

lulz. datsa smackdown

Re:You know what destroys a sites credibility?

[Fex303]

Yeah, gee, you wouldn't want to destroy the credibility of an esteemed site like 4chan, which up till now has been held in such high regard...

Re:You know what destroys a sites credibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead, lets squander whatever credibility Slashdot has earned with hints of sabotage and knee-jerk stories about the evil corporates repressing 4chan innocents.

CUT THEIR FIBERZ NOW!!! TEH EVIL CORPORATES MUST DIE!!!1

'bout done with this silly shit.

Then they came for the USB Mice...

[Anonymous Coward]

but I trolled using plain html and wit that RMS can't handle.

Then they came for the USB port, but I used a PS/2 bridged Wacom tablet.

Yhen they came for my porn collection, and they haven't stopped cumming.

Score: 0 (Logged-in users start at Score: 1). Create an Account! Confirm your humanity by telling us what you see or hear: mutiny

Aye! Everyone's thinkin' it, I'm just sayin' it. Mutiny is in the wind!

That was a truly awful analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

People from the South automatically favor censorship?

Newsflash: Latitude has nothing to do with religion, freedom vs. censorship, nor race.

ACK Attack

[iYk6]

So to stop a DDoS attack on a server, they remove any and all access to that server? Am I the only one seeing the irony here?

The post you responded to is misleading. According to this: http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/2523/1248672053880.png, this was an ACK attack, which causes problems not only for the directly attacked host, but for other users as well.

Ordinarily, a TCP connection is set up when you send a SYN packet to a website, such as 4chan, and then 4chan responds with a ACK, and then you respond again with a SYN-ACK.

Here is how an ACK attack works. I, the attacker, will send a SYN packet to 4chan, but I am pretending to be you, or your IP address. 4chan then sends an ACK packet to you, excepting a SYN-ACK in response. However, you did not initiate the connection, so you send a RST back to 4chan (or nothing at all, depending on your firewall settings).

Then I do it again. And again. I effectively flood both you and 4chan with meaningless traffic. Your traffic problems are even worse, because if you have a firewall blocking the RST packets, then 4chan will send you 4 ACK packets (depending on configuration) for every SYN packet I send them.

In this case, AT&T and other ISPs decided that the simplest solution to ending this DOS against their users was to block packets to and from 4chan (or a specific part of 4chan).

Re:ACK Attack

[Anonymous Coward]

SYN
SYN-ACK
ACK

The right 3-way handshake

Re:ACK Attack

[Anonymous Coward]

More commonly known as a SYN flood. Much more commonly.

Re:ACK Attack

[dublindan]

I'm in favour to transitioning away from TCP/IP towards SCTP/IP personally. Any future network code I write will be based on SCTP instead of TCP, if I can get away with it. :-P Not only is it more resilient to SYN flooding than TCP is, but it gives me other nice possibilities like multiple streams per connection, multi-homing, the choice of ordered or unordered and the choice of reliable or unreliable. The disadvantage being that its not as widely used, so there may be some associated issues, though Linux, at least, does have SCTP support out of the box :-)

Re:ACK Attack

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes the simplest, short sighted solution.

The real solution of course would be for all ISP's to identify bots in their own networks and cut those of the network until the owner cleans up his mess.

But that would hurt the bottom line more. Why deal with paying angry customers when you can just cut off something else ?

Re:ACK Attack

[Suzuran]

No, a SYN flood is different. In a SYN flood, I attempt to use up every available port on your server by leaving it in a half-open state waiting for a handshake to complete.

Re:ACK Attack

[EvilMole]

Actually, it wouldn't hurt the bottom line at all. The bandwidth consumed by the average botted PC is far higher than a regular user. Thus, they cost ISPs more.

Re:ACK Attack

[Anonymous Coward]

No. And I coined the term, in 2600 magazine.

Re:ACK Attack

[vivaelamor]

Then I do it again. And again. I effectively flood both you and 4chan with meaningless traffic. Your traffic problems are even worse, because if you have a firewall blocking the RST packets, then 4chan will send you 4 ACK packets (depending on configuration) for every SYN packet I send them.

I don't see why AT&T would choose blocking access entirely over some pretty simple filtering to let legitimate traffic through while stopping the flood getting past their first router.

There should be no difference between the two unless they have inadequate hardware not capable of filtering at capacity. Exactly the same amount of flooded traffic is stopped whether you filter it or block the source.

I think the real story here is AT&T being idiots who got caught with their pants down by a 13ish year old exploit that even the most inexperienced network admin should be able to find a solution for within 5 minutes of googling.

Ham-fisted

[kheldan]

Based on what I've been reading about this situation today (was away all of Saturday and most of today) it sounds to me like perhaps someone made what they thought was an insignificant decision to block access to a site they figured nobody really cared about anyway, overstepping their authority I'm sure, and started the shitstorm of the year. Now someone's supervisor has heard about it (probably 3rd hand) and after ripping that person a new asshole, has made them start backing off the blocks. Wouldn't be surprised if someone at AT&T gets fired just to throw some meat to the wolves in the hopes this will all go away. BTW nice ham-fisted attempt to stem the tide of a DDoS botnet, dumbasses.

Re:Ham-fisted

[FireFury03]

BTW nice ham-fisted attempt to stem the tide of a DDoS botnet, dumbasses.

What would _you_ have done if you were in charge of AT&T's network?

Unintelligent Design.

[Ostracus]

"...while some others suggest more drastic action (like cutting AT&T fiber)."

*sniff*wipes tear from eye*

Humanity. You make me so proud.

I could reply on topic, but...

[dvh.tosomja]

I could reply on topic in this thread, but the following shitstorm of modfags will flush my karma down the toilet. I wonder, can karma on /. be worse than my current "bad"?

Re:I could reply on topic, but...

[clone53421]

I'm not sure, but I do know that an on-topic reply would be less likely to get an offtopic moderation.

Re:"Censorship comes to America"

[Widowwolf]

"Private corporations deciding for themselves what people should and should not view on the Internet?"


Wow you guys really are that gullible to see the logical explanation behind it, and not see multiple service providers we doing it because and attack..These providers aren't choosing what to and what not to show, they are protecting from attacks. Maybe someone should ship you off to the Communist People's Republic of China so you can really get a view of no rights.

4chan Down

[partyguerrilla]

Now the whole site seems to be down. Was AT&T's block the only thing preventing the DDoS attack from overwhelming the site? That would be hilariously ironic, considering the tantrum you guys were throwing about it. http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/4chan.org

Re:4chan Down

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably DDoS to hell and back again by 4chan's biggest enemy AnonTalk; those two have a history of DDoSing each other.

Re:4chan Down

[Venim]

Really i'd rather let the site go down to ddos than blocking and i think most would agree.

Re:4chan Down

[Simple-Simmian]

LOL

Knuckleheads DDoS 4chan.
AT&T reacts with blocking /b/ and /r9k/.
AT&T removes block.
Some other knuckleheads launch a new bigger attack across all of 4chan.
Blame goes to AT&T.
Knuckleheads sit back and watch.
Priceless.

Re:4chan Down

[ChoboMog]

According to http://status.4chan.org/

"Cogent Communications has joined the club-they're now blocking all of 4chan. I can't even access the site at this point. We're working on it..."

So the site isn't down, in the sense that the servers are still running, and its not a DDOS attack but simply a denial of service by the ISPs/Backbones needed to access it. Net Neutrality anyone?...

Re:4chan Down

[shentino]

Better yet would be the ISPs doing egress filtering making sure no martians get out.

./ launches DoS attack by posting link

[justcauseisjustthat]

Damn that ./ community, censoring another web site by sending too many reader to it :-)

In related news:

[nilbog]

In other news: AT&T pokes bees nest while wearing meat suit in hungry tiger cage.

Before anyone starts posting about conspiracies...

[Dulcise]

They have probably blocked the site so they don't need to pay for the bandwidth that is being used to attack it.

Not buying the DOS story

[StreetChip]

There are ways to block DOS attacks other than killing all legitimate website traffic. Alternative scenarios: Skynet? Something went wrong in the Black Mesa Research Facility? Bored at work pranksters in the AT&T central office? Secret CIA plot?

Re:Not buying the DOS story

[Anonymous Coward]

There... are?

Pray enlighten us.

Re:Not buying the DOS story

[SheeEttin]

Moot says it was a DDoS. Truth, or dastardly plot? YOU DECIDE.

Freedom and privacy

[jandersen]

It seems absurd to me that some (almost) equate freedom, privacy and anonymity. Surely if you believe that you have freedom, you don't need to be anonymous when you speak your mind? And if you speak in a public forum, then you have voluntarily given up your claim to privacy, as far as your opinions go, don't you agree? I can't help feeling that the people who keep propangandising for the right to anonymity in everything they do, have reasons to be ashamed of themselves.

Looked at objectively, anonymity helps criminals enormously, but it doesn't really make a lot of difference to ordinary people. If you go shopping it may be annoying that you are recorded on CCTV, but it is a lot more than annoying if you are burgling a house - it could get you caught.

So, what about img.4chan.org - is it right or wrong to block them? I don't know - and I don't care, to be honest; there are so many web-sites and forums in the world and I only access a few any way. If this one served an important purpose for us all, I'm fairly confident I would have known by now. But I am getting a bit fed up with some people's whining over having to speaking out in the open - I just can't respect that kind of attitude. We in the western world have got political and religious freedoms to excess, but it has always been and will always be a freedom with responsibility attached; because freedom will always be abused by those who feel they are entitled to get more than they have earned.

Re:Freedom and privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

You have never been punished for exercising your freedom to speak by someone with more money or political clout than you have making you pay for disagreeing with them I see. Being able to be anonymous is basic to free speech.

Re:Freedom and privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Anonymous" thing on imageboards is more of a historical accident than anything, it was certainly never intended to conceal criminality (and doesn't, logs are kept and mods cooperate with the authorities like every other admin.) It has been retained because, at its best, it produces a unique and positive atmosphere. Posts are judged on CONTENT rather than the user's postcount, how much mod penis they have sucked etc. The very idea of censorship of anything not illegal becomes silly, hence bizarre topics offensive to most "normal" forum users can be discussed. Trolling and abuse of other users is of course rampant, but it's mostly good natured and the users wouldn't want it any other way.

Re:Freedom and privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely if you believe that you have freedom, you don't need to be anonymous when you speak your mind?

Freedom means a right to remain anonymous. If you force me to give up my identity, then I lose in freedom.

And if you speak in a public forum, then you have voluntarily given up your claim to privacy, as far as your opinions go, don't you agree? I can't help feeling that the people who keep propangandising for the right to anonymity in everything they do, have reasons to be ashamed of themselves.

Maybe they just don't want people to bother them. Like people who want to sell them things related to their activities, or people who would intrude in their lives.
I go riding my bicycle in public, but I don't want commercials that try to sell me new wheels, and I don't want anyone coming with me.
Privacy means a right to be left alone, physically and spiritually.

Looked at objectively, anonymity helps criminals enormously, but it doesn't really make a lot of difference to ordinary people. If you go shopping it may be annoying that you are recorded on CCTV, but it is a lot more than annoying if you are burgling a house - it could get you caught.

Then put cameras in your house...

because freedom will always be abused by those who feel they are entitled to get more than they have earned.

Bawwww... And who will judge how much I am entitled to ? You ? Are you not abusing MY freedom ?

Re:Freedom and privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely if you believe that you have freedom, you don't need to be anonymous when you speak your mind?

You're confusing a RIGHT to free speech with a lack of CONSEQUENCES for speaking your mind.

I can't help feeling that the people who keep propangandising for the right to anonymity in everything they do, have reasons to be ashamed of themselves.

Well, some probably do; others, probably not. Would you consent to having the police search your house now if they came to your door and asked nicely? Probably not; if they didn't have a warrant, you'd tell them to go away. And the fact that you would doesn't have you have "reasons to be ashamed of yourself", or that you have something to hide.

Of course it's not quite the same, but it does illustrate an important point: just like the fact you didn't allow them to search your home on request is not ipso facto evidence you've got something to hide, the fact people don't necessarily want their names on everything they say is not ipso facto evidence they've got reasons to be ashamed of themselves", either.

Looked at objectively, anonymity helps criminals enormously, but it doesn't really make a lot of difference to ordinary people.

That, at the very least, is a claim you'd have to back up with some serious evidence, but I'll go ahead and say it's actually outright wrong.

But beyond that, who are you to tell others that they do or don't need privacy, anyway? Speak for yourself; if you don't need or want any, that's fine, but what right do you have to deny it to others?

So, what about img.4chan.org - is it right or wrong to block them? I don't know - and I don't care, to be honest; there are so many web-sites and forums in the world and I only access a few any way.

Well, that's one way to look at it, but I'm pretty sure that history - and I mean all of history - has shown us that looking the other way when someone's mistreated is bad, even when it doesn't affect you. I really don't want to drag out the whole "first, they came for the jews" thing by Niemöller again, but the gist of that message there seems to apply here.

Finally, if you'll allow me to ask - what is your name? Surely you will have no problem with giving it up, based on what you said above. (And similarly, I hope you'll understand that based on what *I* said above, I am unable to return the favor.)

Re:Freedom and privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely if you believe that you have freedom, you don't need to be anonymous when you speak your mind?

Surely, if I have freedom, I have the freedom to be anonymous? More importantly, if I have the freedom to be anonymous, I inevitably also have several other freedoms - to speak unpopular opinions, to criticise the government - that I might not otherwise have.

I also have the freedom to incite violence, to make false advertising claims, and other things that perhaps we'd rather didn't happen. So it's a freedom versus security issue, again.

We in the western world have got political and religious freedoms to excess...

If you believe in the concept of excess freedom...

Re:Freedom and privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems just as absurd to me that some equate freedom, identity and individuality. I would think that a truely 'free' society should have both options, no? There is no natural law that says opinion must be tied to the human being who spoke it. Even though it might be the case that we are used to the idea of identity as being the staple of individuality and therefore tied inextricably to our 'freedom', that is merely the path our society has chosen. I find it hard to believe it is the only path, or the most beneficial.

Secondly, looked at objectively, any privacy helps criminals enormously, but doesn't really make a lot of difference to ordinary people. The rub is, there are times when we are out of the ordinary. Some are out of the ordinary legally and some, socially. What purpose does it serve, then, to deny anonymity when it is likely the case that every single one of us has something we'd just rather not tell to everyone or anyone (at least while attaching ourselves publicly to it).

Re:Freedom and privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that "ashamed" doesn't mean you're doing something illegal. And there's a difference between "beliefs" and "reality". You could "believe" that you should have the right to say something but *not* have it. I mean, I "believe" I should have the right to make unlimited copies of the musics I bought, with my own money, and break digital protections to play these musics on any medium I bought too, but *not* have this right, hence getting in the way of the DMCA.

Maybe you currentlyl have not seen your place in some group (company, social position, ...) been threatened by some lawful intellectuals who think your "thoughts" as a nuisance. "Criminal" is only defined by some arbitrary "moral". If this "moral" changes, you might then be considered as a "criminal".

Since you have nothing to hide, allow me to a take a peak at your letters... and sell these informations to everyone. And traces all your steps and actions on a public website. And do the same things with your family. Since they're not criminals, they've got nothing to hide... So I can list everything about them, their likes, dislikes, personal informations, medical informations, criminal past if any... Well, why not show your email in your profile then ? Is it because you're one of these researched spammers and you don't want to get busted ? Don't have any other reason... If you're not showing it, it's because you're a criminal ! I'm calling the feds right now !

Did it ever occured to you that people might not want to be tracked down by other "criminals" ? And giving too much informations could also "greatly" help them ? Could easily steal everything in your house If I knew when you're not there and when nobody will spot me.

You think yourself as a all-knowing entity that knows everything, dictates who can and can't speak and what should be considered as absolutely wrong and right by your own arbiter. Get off your imaginary pedestal. Unless you have found all the websites, you're unable to determine if some website is more significant than you. You're speaking about responsibilities but I don't think you really know the significance (and insignificance) of this word. Responsibilities is just "moral" who are forced upon people, by self-interest ("Not gonna punch freely the neighboor kid, else somebody will do the same with my kids, which won't serve my interest.") or forced by other groups ("You'll be held responsible for every problem in the vicinity, and sentenced to death, if you're caught doing sex in some unholy positions."). If people needs to speak, why should they be denied ? Because they're against your thoughts ? Why should they do what *you* want them to do when they're posting on a website ?

IMHO, you only look like somebody who love to trample other's people rights to speak when they're contradicting you. Too bad, those people didn't let their names so you can't do anything.
To finish, if you don't care about 4chan and freedom in the internet, why are your posting in a news talking about censorship and 4chan ?

Re:Freedom and privacy

[shentino]

Probable cause is my favorite silver lining here.

Though any government powerful enough to force your anonymity out the window is also strong enough to brand you a criminal if you disagree.

Remember, the government that is strong enough to give you what you want (security) is strong enough to take away everything you have (freedom).

Re:Freedom and privacy

[justinlee37]

I can't help feeling that the people who keep propangandising for the right to anonymity in everything they do, have reasons to be ashamed of themselves.

Maybe we are ashamed of our government's laws. If we can't legalize marijuana (since the drug war is a wasteful failure) we can campaign for the right to privacy instead. Anonymity helps criminals but not all criminals are "bad guys." Anne Frank was a criminal once, for being a jew. Think of what the right to privacy could have done for her.

Re:Freedom and privacy

[roystgnr]

Surely if you believe that you have freedom,

Somewhere in between the unwarranted wiretaps and the indefinite detentions without trials, I decided to stop taking that belief for granted.

you don't need to be anonymous when you speak your mind?

My country was literally founded by people anonymously speaking their minds. I would be very wary of anyone who claims we don't need that right anymore.

Re:Freedom and privacy

[Urza9814]

Yea, that's a great theory and all, but I have personally been in a situation where my mother's employer was following her, there were cars staked out across the street from our house all day, harrassing phone calls at all hours of the night, etc. We didn't get it as bad as some other people though - luckily my father is a lawyer, and they knew that. And why did all this happen? Because she was exercising her right to free speech, and her right to association. She was trying to unionize the hospital where she worked. And, in the end, she was successful and still works there, but had she made one mistake at work or even at home, she would have been unemployed within hours.

And this is a small hospital in a fairly small rural town, and for trying to unionize. Can you imagine what a large corporation would be willing to do to, say, a whistleblower? If you can't be anonymous, you can't be free. Just because your actions are legal doesn't mean there won't be consequences.

Re:Freedom and privacy

[skeeto]

Your argument can be summed up with, "Why do you need privacy and anonymous speech if you have nothing to hide?". There is information all over the web about why this is a naive, poorly thought out argument.

Rule #1...

[ChoboMog]

"That server is used for the infamous /b/ board" ... What is this "/b/" you speak of?

Re:Rule #1...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those "rules" of the internet were created by Gaiaonline. They have no basis on 4chan or anywhere.

Most of us actually laugh at you folks who adhere to such silly rules.

Re:Rule #1...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those rules might not have been written but they were very much real. The true spirit of the rules existed without a numbered list for a long time, and it stemmed from the social stigma that 4chan's content operated with. You didn't talk about it because doing so would associate you with it. In my view, that was the true anonymous form. As the culture online and popularly changed, so did the stigma attached to 4chan and other like sites.

If you had been a part of 4chan from the beginning you would have known that because you lived it. You obviously did not, which is fine because things change. But it's foolish to pretend it did not exist at all.

Re:Rule #1...

[Megane]

Damn. I was sure they came from eBaumsWorld.

Re:Rule #1...

[Anonymous Coward]

I meant as in the physical "Rules", the ones that people kept talking about and spouting out like "LOL RULES 1 AND 2 GAIZ", the ones that you read about on various forums, like 4chan is some kind of secret club. We just didn't talk about it, much like how a lot of people don't talk about what they browse in general.

Big Mistake.

[Ninjie]

There are many things in this existence you do not mess with. One of those is the moral-less, ethic-less, MERCILESS B-tards of Anonymous. I can already see the lightning in the distance and the worms are making their way out of the can. I am happy I am not directly involved in any of this. Good luck Intarwebs.

How does this leave AT&T wrt common carrier st

[Arimus]

If, as appears to be the case, AT&T are actively censoring a site won't this in effect remove their common carrier status so leaving them open to being liable to be prosecuted for any questionable material of any nature which is carried on their network (either to an end user on their network, from a server on their network or traffic routed over their network to/from non-AT&T network end points)...

Cogent is blocking them now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Monday, July 27, 2009

Cogent Communications has joined the clubâ"they're now blocking all of 4chan. I can't even access the site at this point.

We're working on it...

Re:How does this leave AT&T wrt common carrier

[Ninjie]

This is a good point. I think the question before the main discussion is, "Are carriers exempt from liability if they agree to allow any and all traffic through their media without any monitoring or intervention?" It does seem to be black and white. Two sides of the dimensionless line. Either the carrier is responsible for all material or no material existing on its lines.

It's their idea of "net neutrality"

[Simple-Simmian]

I will be making a stink about this to the FCC and my Idiot US Senators today.

I didn't get it.

[eexaa]

From the myriad of *chans they block the least offensive one. Looks like some CEO just saw his first goatse and raged.

AT&T DSL user here.

[Alex Belits]

I can confirm that img.4chan.org and www.4chan.org are unreachable from my home DSL (AT&T/Yahoo in Northern California). Everything works fine once I have routed 207.126.64.0/24 through OpenVPN over a non-AT&T network.

Re:AT&T DSL user here.

[Alex Belits]

Access is now restored -- I can see 4chan without VPN.

Not blocking 4chan.org for all users

[Futurepower(R)]

The issue was reported on Reddit.com 16 hours ago. At no time, apparently, was access to img.4chan.org slow. Also, at present the IP address 207.126.64.181 connects directly to 4chan.org, as it should.

So, AT&T, is not blocking img.4chan.org, the company is only blocking some of its users. Check 4chan status. Quote: "UPDATE: Some coverage on TechCrunch, Digg, reddit, and Google News. Also, note that AT&T has yet to contact us."

Be real funny if they tried too

[Sycraft-fu]

Turns out that you aren't nearly as "anonymous" as you might think on the Internet, and really not at all in the real world. Also turns out that the FBI doesn't give a shit when you just act like retards on an image board, but they take an interest when you attack national infrastructure. I'd laugh my ass off if a couple of 4chan morons got locked up for something stupid like this.

Re:Be real funny if they tried too

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI only care about football. Do NOT fuck with football.

Re:Be real funny if they tried too

[Megane]

Unless of course it's the scilons behind the DDoS. I'd laugh more parts of my body than just my ass off if a couple of scilon morons got locked up for something stupid like this. But I'm not going to sit around waiting for that to happen.

Oh really?

[Sycraft-fu]

I'll quote Wikipedia on this one: "Citation needed." You have any evidence at all that this happens? For that matter, do you have any idea how fibre is run in the US? Here's a hint: It isn't on telephone poles, it is under ground. Also, it isn't as though it doesn't have a shield around it. These are not bare wires, they are run in thick bundles, which are then protected. They have to be strong since the term "pulling fibre" is not a casual one. It does actually get pulled through conduit and such and thus needs a good deal of strength.

This idea that "Oh well just make it look like a squirrel," shows an extreme amount of ignorance about the way it is done.

Also I'm going to say between threats online, evidence like people looking for AT&T fibre maps and multiple cuts, if they actually did something like this, it'd be figured out real quick and some people would go to jail.

4chan joke?

[Futurepower(R)]

Is it possible this is just another 4chan prank?

From the 4chan status blog...

[shacky003]

"It's come to our attention that AT&T is filtering/blocking img.4chan.org (/b/ & /r9k/) for many of their customers. There is no remedy at this time. If you've been affected, I would advise you call or write customer support and corporate immediately. UPDATE: Some coverage on TechCrunch, Digg, reddit, and Google News. Also, note that AT&T has yet to contact us. by moot @ 6:41 PM "

Still blocked

[ronmon]

As of Monday at 7am here in Key West, it is still blocked. Not that I care, but it is unavailable.

4chan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that Engrish for Fortran?

Not HOUSTON

[redelm]

I'm on AT&T (SWbell) in Houston and just checked out /b/ and /r9k/. Acting a bit slow (slashdot effect?) but otherwise available.

YMMV. Maybe somebody is blocked. Maybe its' a nice troll. Expecting the Internet to always work everywhere is to misunderstand the Tao.

Re:Not HOUSTON

[Anonymous Coward]

>implying a Slashdot flood would affect /b/

laughing elf man.jpg

4chan does a good enough job ddosing themselves

[SCHecklerX]

Really.

Their community is infected with crap all the time, which in turn attacks /b/. At least it typically only affects their own board.

img.4chan should be blocked for business networks

[Anonymous Coward]

Open DNS has long blocked that site. Site blocked. img.4chan.org is not allowed on this network.

This site was categorized as:

Alcohol, Chat, Hate/discrimination, Humor, P2p/file Sharing, Weapons, Photo Sharing, Adult Themes, Tasteless, Lingerie/bikini, Sexuality, Nudity, Pornography, Forums/message Boards

Questions? Not properly categorized?

AT&T

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess AT&T don't liek mudkips..

So this isn't due to Adam L. Goldstein?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, this guy.

Re:How does this leave AT&T wrt common carrier

[Megane]

But is it "censoring" if they are blocking it for solely technical reasons? Like a jillion ACK packets coming in from spoofed SYN-floods?

Re: img.4chan should be blocked for business netwo

[Megane]

Questions? Not properly categorized?

I'm sure they're missing a few categories in that list.

"Clever, created, talent, energetic"

[circletimessquare]

a /b/tard is not created. a /b/tard is made

What now???

[orsty3001]

Where am I supposed to post my funny MEMEs and links to girllookslikeabitch.com now?

Re:How does this leave AT&T wrt common carrier

[Arimus]

At the time I posted I was going off the following (in this instance the inquisitor but most articles had the same view):-
"The censorship was first reported on Reddit, where users confirmed with AT&T that the site had indeed been censored, and was not being blocked due to a technical issue. 4chan owner Moot later confirmed the news, saying that the /r9k/ was also blocked and that AT&T users should "call or write [to] customer support and [AT&T] corporate immediately.""

If, as it now appears, the block was for technical reasons then that is indeed a different kettle of fish... and would not affect (AFAIK) their common carrier status.

Re: img.4chan should be blocked for business netwo

[clone53421]

And you find this... surprising?!

Meanwhile..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. the productivity of teens in the south has gone up by over 9000%.

Think of the tiger!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, the felinity!

Re: Cleaning Mom's Computer

[billstewart]

We got my late mother-in-law a computer back in the late 90s, and an AOL account, so she could do email and read her celebrity gossip and such. Unlike my mom, who's moderately tech-savvy and used Macs, my MIL was the type who'd happily click on the "we can make your PC go faster" or "get these cute dancing kitty cursors today!!!" popups, so her machine was generally a wretched hive of villainy and viral scum. On the other hand, she didn't really get the hang of saving things to disk files, so if she wanted to save something, she'd either print it out on dead trees or file it away in AOL. That meant that cleaning her machine was usually easy - wipe out everything, install the OS from scratch, and install the latest AOL coaster, and it was good as new.

ISP competition vs. Wireless competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Your choice of wireless providers is limited because the FCC is Here to Help Us, so only a few companies have spectrum in a given area and you may have NIMBYs or mountains limiting the locations of antennas nearby, so you may have to deal with a company that sucks because the competition sucks even worse. Your choice of cable TV companies used to be similarly limited, though the FCC and Congress liberalized the rules a decade or so ago and now it's only economics and right-of-way limitations on that (if you want cable as opposed to satellite TV.)

But at least in most of the US, your telco has to offer wholesale access to Layer 1 and Layer 2 DSL services, so even though there may be only one set of wires coming to your house and you may be limited by the speed of the telco's DSLAM (if you're not using a CLEC), you've got a choice of dozens to hundreds of DSL-based ISPs that are setting policies and services you can get over that DSL. I'm using a small ISP that resells telco DSL service, but I get N static addresses, Port 25 isn't blocked so I can use my own Linux mail servers, there isn't a monthly usage-GB cap, and if I wanted to run a business over the service I could. It's not as cheap as pure telco service, and every couple of years there's a telco-wiring problem that takes a bit longer to fix going through my ISP than directly, but it's very competent service that doesn't suck.

Disclaimer: I'm posting anonymously because I work for a telco, this is my personal opinion and not theirs, and telcos don't admit that they or their competition might suck, yadda yadda.

Blocking customers vs. outsiders from DDOS

[Anonymous Coward]

If I read the news articles correctly, and if they were correct to start with (both of which are iffy :-), this isn't AT&T blocking their customer 4chan to make them clean up their act - this is AT&T blocking traffic between their DSL users who were getting attacked by somebody on one of 4chan's servers who are probably on some other ISP. It's really a different problem.

On the other hand, if the attacks are coming from one server, then it may be DOS, but it's not DDOS, unless they're claiming that the bot-controller lives on 4chan's server and they're trying to block their virus-infected zombie users from phoning home? I'd say there are several sets of less-than-completely-detailed news around.

4chan advertising?

[Futurepower(R)]

YES. But I'm guessing this is not the whole story:

But now 4chan's founder, Moot, has admitted the whole thing was kind of his fault.

"For the past three weeks, 4chan has been under a constant DDoS attack," Moot wrote in an afternoon update. "We were able to filter this specific type of attack in a fashion that was more or less transparent to the end user. ... Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers."

Re:How does this leave AT&T wrt common carrier

[Megane]

...but of course everyone had to immediately jump about three hundred feet vertically to a conclusion. ZOMG TEH SENSORSHOOPZ! BOIKOTTZ NAO!

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Or in this case, a weekend NOC guy shutting off a network flood. Basically, you're making the assumption that they blocked the site knowing it was 4chan, rather than knowing it as yet another faceless IP address that was the source of a flood. Even if they had done a reverse name lookup, you can't even assume that they would know what 4chan was. It hasn't exactly made the national news. (local news every now and then when a local TV station wants ratings, but not national) Maybe the NOC flunkie knew what it was, but his boss or his boss's boss didn't, and said to cut it off.

Part of the problem is the "Tell us what you did and why RIGHT NOW OR ELSE!" attitude of so many internet users. Sorry, folks, big companies just aren't set up to give you instant answers about what some sub-department did two hours ago, much less on a weekend. That's not "evil", that's just BIG.

As someone on a Digg thread said, the regular 'channers knew the site had been under attack for a couple of weeks. The once-in-a-whilers didn't know anything until they heard it was blocked.

Block lifted; moot provides details.

[LackThereof]

moot has posted the details on status.4chan.org.

Basically he confirms all the speculation that AT&T blocked 4chan because of ACK bouncebacks from a DDOS. Real /b/tards probably already had off-network proxies at the ready to deal with it.

Also, being on AT&T and unable to access 4chan doesn't necessarily mean that it's been blocked. 4chan is up and down all the time, because they're under constant DDOS attacks, at pretty much all times, from various sources. It seems that DDOSing 4chan is a basic holding pattern for botnets that aren't otherwise occupied.

Here's what happened:

For the past three weeks, 4chan has been under a constant DDoS attack. We were able to filter this specific type of attack in a fashion that was more or less transparent to the end user.

Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers.

In response, AT&T filtered all traffic to and from our img.4chan.org IPs (which serve /b/ & /r9k/) for their entire network, instead of only the affected customers. AT&T did not contact us prior to implementing the block. Here is their statement regarding the matter.

In the end, this wasn't a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T's part. Whoever pulled the trigger on blackholing the site probably didn't anticipate [nor intend] the consequences of doing so.

We're glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and internet censorshipâ"two very important issues that don't get nearly enough attentionâ"so perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise.

Aside from that, I'll also add that there is some big news due later this week. Keep an eye on the News page, Twitter, and global message for updates.

As always, I can be reached at moot@4chan.org.

---

PS: If any companies would like to hook us up with some better hardware, feel free! The architecture we've got powering this large and influential beast is really quite embarrassing. ( ._.)

Security Officer

[CmdrPorno]

Can you imagine being in charge of AT&T's security? I bet they are now having to monitor every post on /b/ for threats against AT&T.

Job description: "Reading posts about testicles and lolcats. Looking at pictures of naked women."

Not offtopic

[justinlee37]

I'm not offtopic here. Some drug war shill has modded me down because he doesn't like what I have to say, even though it's a very valid point. Smoking marijuana is not wrong. Nobody should go to jail for smoking marijuana. This country is fucked up. Actually, so is the world.