Did the Spamhaus DDoS Really Slow Down Global Internet Access?

CowboyRobot writes "Despite the headlines, the big denial of service attack may not have slowed the Internet after all. The argument against the original claim include the fact that reports of Internet users seeing slowdowns came not from service providers, but the DDoS mitigation service CloudFlare, which signed up Spamhaus as a customer last week. Also, multiple service providers and Internet watchers have now publicly stated that while the DDoS attacks against Spamhaus could theoretically have led to slowdowns, they've seen no evidence that this occurred for general Internet users. And while some users may have noticed a slowdown, the undersea cable cuts discovered by Egyptian sailors had more of an impact than the DDoS."

Comments

reporting

[gbjbaanb]

as usual, ArsTechnica does a much better job of describing this, slashdot eds, take note please!

The best text-only (no ads!) reply though is from Richard A Steenbergen who responded to the gizmodo article. This guy works at one of the tier 1 providers and described the problem, particularly that the DDoS wasn't a big deal for them but that the attack on the INX exchanges might have been.. but turned out not to be after a little tweaking of their filters.

Nevertheless, the problem that I can see is that the internet is open to these kind of attacks. Now Spamhaus can get CloudFlare to handle these attacks on their behalf (for a lot of free advertising) but MyLittleSite.com cannot, and that leave them open to extortion attacks from the criminals who run these DDoSs. Surely a more appropriate response would not be "yeah, we're great, we can handle a poxy 300Gbps" but "we need to sort out this so the baddies cannot screw people with impunity". I'd prefer a technical resolution (eg ingress/egress filtering, rate limiting, non-recursive responses from outside your domain) to legal ones which is all there is at the moment it seems.

Re:reporting

[Hentes]

A technical solution would require redefining the IP standard.

Re:reporting

[heypete]

Now Spamhaus can get CloudFlare to handle these attacks on their behalf (for a lot of free advertising) but MyLittleSite.com cannot, and that leave them open to extortion attacks from the criminals who run these DDoSs.

Why not? CloudFlare has a free tier specifically designed for smaller sites. It's mostly used by bloggers and stuff to cache static content than for DDOS protection, but it offers the same level of functionality. The paid service they offer has extra features like SSL support and other options, but all levels of the service offer DDOS protection.

Re:reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a contract problem. 'We will test your ingress/egress filters or you do not use our link'. Problem solved.

Re:reporting

[sl4shd0rk]

resolution (eg ingress/egress filtering, rate limiting, non-recursive responses from outside your domain) to legal ones

Umm.. I'm not sure I follow you. The DDoS was comprised of DNS Reflection. Trying to add filtering at layer 2/3 is absolutely pointless since you're saturated at layer 0. The physical hardware is overwhelmed trying to keep up with the packets coming in.

Re:reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the beginning of the very first Ars article you link to says: "And while it hasn't brought the Internet itself down, it has caused major slowdowns in the Internet's core networks." with CloudFare's blog for only source, I'd say no, this is not "as usual Ars does a much better job" (as much as I love Ars).

Re:reporting

[geoskd]

A technical solution would require redefining the IP standard.

Not really, Two things would go a long way towards ending the ddos threat permanently. First, Implementing gateway sanity checks that already exist. If a provider is forwarding packets with spoofed IP address', then un-peer them until they fix their configurations.

Second, is an out of band feature which provides a mechanism where the recipient of a packet can flag that packet as malicious and ask the upstream connection to shut them down at their source. This feature should be recursive, and with the same sanity checks to make sure the requests are legitimate.

As a result of these two, a ddos begins: The recipient computer starts flagging IP address and requesting that their host provider shut off the flows from each IP as they are identified. Host provider filters everything from that IP. for a random interval between 10 minutes and a half hour. The host IP also passes the filter request upstream to the next link in the chain. This process continues until it backtracks all the way to each source machine, which finds itself disconnected for 10 minutes. If the owner is private, then they will call their ISP to find out why their connection sucks, at which point the ISP tells them, your machine is taking part in an illegal ddos. If you don't know how to fix it, take your computer to the local shop to have it cleaned, and have them explain internet security to you while they're at it. If the computer is institutional, then their IT department is going to have one heck of lot of explaining to do, being as they have compromised servers and had to be told by their ISP that they have a problem... Either way, no bot net operator will risk having their botnet dismantled automatically without a very long thought about what they are trying to accomplish. Additionally, no ddos would be effective for more than a few minutes as the requests filtered back upstream and shut it down at its distributed sources.

The biggest complaint I always hear about this plan, is what if someone spoofs shutdown requests to get someone disconnected. That kind of spoofing could only work if one of the intermediate nodes is compromised, or the IP validation is not enabled. either way, it requires that the network be broken in easily fixable ways, which presumably will be fixed as soon as discovered. Think of the whole system as an autoimmune reaction to infection. Terribly effective and largely automatic.

-=Geoskd

Re:reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Although ArsTechnica does perpetuate the lie that a Dutch SWAT team tried to enter the bunker when no such thing actually happened.

Re:reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Its simple.

I am A. I mark my packet as coming from B (my target), I as for machine C (also my target).

So what happens is I send a packet from machine A. Both the response B goes to you my target AND you get the request for the data C (maybe you or another target).

So instead of figuring out oh network/computer is the one doing this. You have no idea where it came from. It just showed up. So I can send 10 or so bytes of data and inundate you my target box with 1k of data. For the cost of 10 bytes. You can not figure out who it is so you can even yell at the right network guy to yank the plug. You end up having to track down each link and backtrack it. Very tedious. This sort of attack is old hat (known very well in the early 90s) think that GRC guy went bonkers on it around 2002.

At this point in internet time this should not even be going on. This mess should have been cleared up years ago. On by default at the router level. The crap would not even leave the attackers network.

Re:reporting

[WaffleMonster]

A technical solution would require redefining the IP standard.

This is not something new. These attacks have been known for decades. The majority of existing protocols either are not subject to or have protections against this problem.

If you try and send SYN packets to start a TCP session using a spoofed source address the vast majority of currently deployed stacks will start requring cookies. If you are not able to receive the cookie your evil plot is foiled.

This problem really still only exists in a subset of clueless UDP protocols.

New UDP protocols such as DTLS have it right from day 1. Before TLS handshake starts and DTLS server allocates any state the client must echo back a stateless cookie provided by the server to guard against spoofing. This protects against resource exhaustion and amplification.

There are stateless cookies for other common UDP protocols subject to this problem including SIP and DNS. It requires no change to IP and only minor changes to most existing UDP based protocols.

For SNMP lock down community, use TCP/TLS or DTLS instead. You get better security and there is no more amplification insanity.

Either way you look at it a lot of work still needs to be done to solve the problem. Whether from the operator filtering end or the protocol end. They both suck and they both need to be fixed.

Re:reporting

[Zumbs]

What if someone - say one of the millions of compromised computers out there - were to send a shutdown request against a large player - say spamhaus. By your example, spamhaus would be taken offline until someone at spamhaus' IT department called their ISP to get the block cleared. At which point another compromised computer sends a new shutdown request. Sure, you loose a few bots, but at the cost of one bot per 5 minutes downtime for a large vendor, you can get a pretty big bang out of a small bot network.

Re:reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

resolution (eg ingress/egress filtering, rate limiting, non-recursive responses from outside your domain) to legal ones

Umm.. I'm not sure I follow you. The DDoS was comprised of DNS Reflection. Trying to add filtering at layer 2/3 is absolutely pointless since you're saturated at layer 0. The physical hardware is overwhelmed trying to keep up with the packets coming in.

I would guess he means filtering at the sending end in for sending IP's that are not in-network. And rate limiting on the recursive DNS end.

These are the obvious solutions to this kind of DDOS. Unfortunately, these solutions require third parties that are contributing to but not suffering in any serious way from the DDOS, to configure their servers/routers properly. There is a lack of motivation.

Re:reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

"Two things would go a long way towards ending the ddos threat permanently"

This was a smurf amplification attack, so no you won't be ending the ddos threat permanently. Or more accurately, a distributed smurf amplification attack. Your ideas might work to prevent the smurf amplification, but there is nothing which can be done to prevent a simple, direct DDoS. Except to have more bandwidth and processing capability than the attacker does.

Re:reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

resolution (eg ingress/egress filtering, rate limiting, non-recursive responses from outside your domain) to legal ones

Umm.. I'm not sure I follow you. The DDoS was comprised of DNS Reflection. Trying to add filtering at layer 2/3 is absolutely pointless since you're saturated at layer 0. The physical hardware is overwhelmed trying to keep up with the packets coming in.

If they're forging the actual return IP in the IP header section of the packet, then that ought to get caught by ingress/egress filtering by the originating ASN.
But in this case, it's the header information for the DNS payload, so the IP header is usually valid. A properly configured DNS server will simply drop packets which don't have a DNS header matched to the IP header, but there are a lot of places that don't do this which is what allows the return amplification.

And just FYI, if you're talking about layer 0 that physical layer, and at that layer they are referred to as frames, not packets.

Re:reporting

[somersault]

Yep, your solution is worse than the DDoS itself, because it only requires a few requests to take a server offline, not a massively sustained attack.

Can you explain to me how to progmatically tell the difference between your "spoof" shutdown request and a real one? If you can't do that, then you could effectively DDoS an entire ISP when all of their customers have their connections shut down, and they can't get through to support lines because everyone else is phoning up to get their line re-enabled, etc..

Re:reporting

[WaffleMonster]

Second, is an out of band feature which provides a mechanism where the recipient of a packet can flag that packet as malicious and ask the upstream connection to shut them down at their source. This feature should be recursive, and with the same sanity checks to make sure the requests are legitimate.

LOL flag this packet as spam.. There is already a packet option for this in RFC 3514.

As a result of these two, a ddos begins: The recipient computer starts flagging IP address and requesting that their host provider shut off the flows from each IP as they are identified.

How do you identify an attack(er)?

Host provider filters everything from that IP.

Why should they trust your attack classification or anything you tell them? It sounds like a good way for them to get sued into oblivion.

which finds itself disconnected for 10 minutes. If

Why ten minutes? What if I have IPv6 and a number of IPs equal to 4 billion IPv4 Internets? Will it still target single hosts?

If the owner is private, then they will call their ISP to find out why their connection sucks

LOL I think most ISPs would pass unless your volunteering to sit there and pick up the phone for free.

your machine is taking part in an illegal ddos.

In some countries people and their payloads actually get to be innocent until proven otherwise. You still need to explain how you would classify something as an attack...People have spent billions trying to classify email messages as spam vs legitimate and they are still no closer to getting that right.

The biggest complaint I always hear about this plan, is what if someone spoofs shutdown requests to get someone disconnected. That kind of spoofing could only work if one of the intermediate nodes is compromised, or the IP

So in other words your idea only works if the network is trustworthy and we all know that aint so.

I'm not so sure it would be a good thing for the network to ever become trustworthy cause that would have less than positive implications for freedom of speech especially in areas of the world where people are facing actual oppression.

validation is not enabled

What is IP validation?

Think of the whole system as an autoimmune reaction to infection. Terribly effective and largely automatic.

It is fine to dream up solutions to things but the only way to learn and make your ideas better is to be its most vigorous opponent.

Re:reporting

[gbjbaanb]

I wasn't thinking of blog sites and so, but commercial entities that are more likely to be sent an email telling them that unless they pay $10k on a special day (eg a card retailer on Valentine's day) they'll be knocked off the internet for a week.
CloudFlare will handle these extortion attempts, but as the site taking orders will require SSL, its probably cheaper just to pay the criminals. and that's a bad state of affairs.

Re:reporting

[gbjbaanb]

try reading the links. One thing that can happen is for all ISPs to refuse to deliver packets that are sent with a source IP that isn't part of that ISP's network.

Like if I called a pizza company and ordered you a pizza, assuming you lived in New York, and the call from me showed a California number, the pizza place would think twice about filling the order. On the internet, they'd send you a pizza, as would all the other places I'd have called. (ok, not the best analogy, but you get the idea)

Re:reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's cheaper to build your infrastructure in such a way that it can handle things like this. AWS, CloudFlare, dedicated IT staff to monitor your systems and take action when an attack is noticed.

Then again, anyone not doing that probably (shouldn't) be relying on their web presence for their main business income.

Re:reporting

[geoskd]

What if someone - say one of the millions of compromised computers out there - were to send a shutdown request against a large player - say spamhaus. By your example, spamhaus would be taken offline until someone at spamhaus' IT department called their ISP to get the block cleared. At which point another compromised computer sends a new shutdown request. Sure, you loose a few bots, but at the cost of one bot per 5 minutes downtime for a large vendor, you can get a pretty big bang out of a small bot network.

Kind of. In your example, what happens is that spamhouse looses the ability to send packets to that IP address The rest of their connection remains unaffected. Their ISP gets an indication that spamhaus is sending malicious traffic, and the routers have automatically blocked packets to the victims IP address. Everyone else is unaware that anything is going on. Spamhaus is relatively unaffected. It all depends what their ISP does with the information. Institutional services probably wont get disconnected right away, but a private connection might get closed down after a relatively few offenses.

-=Geoskd

Re:reporting

[CBravo]

Or the possibility to block the IP at the source AS.

Re:reporting

[geoskd]

Can you explain to me how to progmatically tell the difference between your "spoof" shutdown request and a real one?

The sanity checks that prevent spoofing IP address will also prevent spoofed kill requests from making it to their destination. Even if the spoofed request makes it to the hosts routers, all it will do is shutdown their ability to send packets to the one ip address. the rest of their connection will remain unaffected. Again, if someone along the line is not doing spoof checking, this will highlight that very quickly, and they will fix it.

From a programming point of view, the routers can be set up to watch traffic. If a kill request comes in for an IP address, but there hasn't been a packet sent from the "offending IP" to the requesting IP recently, then there is clearly something else going on. There is a very simple sanity check that a source (and destination) router can perform. The ISPs at both ends have all of the information to algorithmically detect false alerts, and even a false alert will do relatively little damage. As in all of the other cases, the anti spoofing will make it very clear, very quickly where the infected machines are.

-=Geoskd

Re:reporting

[geoskd]

How do you identify an attack(er)?

It has their actual IP address in it. If it didn't the anti spoofing would have prevented the packet from getting anywhere near the target anyways

Why ten minutes? What if I have IPv6 and a number of IPs equal to 4 billion IPv4 Internets? Will it still target single hosts?

Ten minutes was just an initial figure to put something there. Testing will give a better range for the temporary blocking of packets.

So in other words your idea only works if the network is trustworthy and we all know that aint so.

No, the idea works two-fold. First, it works perfectly if the network is trustworthy, but it also identifies the parts that aren't and can be used to correct the broken parts...

What is IP validation?

IP validation is checking to see if the return IP address on a packet is actually down a trunc from which the packet came. This normally doesn't work terribly well at tier 1 and some tier 2 routers, but at tier 3 it works dynamite. If every router is using it, then it renders it impossible to send packets anonymously (There are no legitimate reasons to send anonymous packets across the internet anyway). You always know where a packet came from, or else it didn't reach you anyways.

It is fine to dream up solutions to things but the only way to learn and make your ideas better is to be its most vigorous opponent.

Which is why I love testbedding my ideas here. I have ready access to a large contingent of very savvy people with a (sometimes rabid) desire to poke holes in any idea. I have gotten some very complicated responses attempting to demonstrate flaws with my proposed solution, but all of them boil down to being able to spoof IPs. without that, the proposed system works.

-=Geoskd

Re:reporting

[geoskd]

LOL I think most ISPs would pass unless your volunteering to sit there and pick up the phone for free.

I think most of them will do this if the alternative is willfully ignoring a criminal act, which in most countries in the world is still conspiracy to commit... Answering the phone once in a while is a small price to pay, especially since, with these protections in place, ddos' will become practically non-existant: Because they would no longer work, no one would bother.

Re:reporting

[geoskd]

People have spent billions trying to classify email messages as spam vs legitimate and they are still no closer to getting that right.

That is because whether or not a particular e-mail is spam, is a very subjective analysis. One persons spam is another's monthly coupons. Personally, I would identify the entire Sunday paper coupon section as spam, but my wife reads it like the bible...

Malicious packets on the other hand are fairly easy to identify, and there isn't much gray area. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it's enemy action.

Re:reporting

[Alarash]

CloudFlare can protect you for free. You might not have as much control but they'll protect you from bots and such for free. Also, MyLittleSite.com probably isn't big enough to piss off anyone who can crank 300 Gbps of DDoS (even if they required only 1/100th of that since they exploited open DNS resolvers).

Re:reporting

[geoskd]

This was a smurf amplification attack, so no you won't be ending the ddos threat permanently. Or more accurately, a distributed smurf amplification attack. Your ideas might work to prevent the smurf amplification, but there is nothing which can be done to prevent a simple, direct DDoS. Except to have more bandwidth and processing capability than the attacker does.

Smurf attacks are easy to stop, and are not terribly effective anymore thanks to various changes made to the IP standard in the last 15 years. IP validation eliminates all possibility of smurf attacks, because smurf attacks only work if IP spoofing works. Properly configured networks are immune.

-=Geoskd

Negative

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be a 'no'.

But, don't let the facts get in the way of sensationalist clickbait and media whoring. If nothing else, the clueless need something to get incensed about and start demanding legislative fixes to imaginary problems.

Purely anecdotal...

[lurker412]

The problem was supposedly more severe in Europe but, FWIW, my response times in Madrid, Spain were completely normal. I realize that proves nothing, but it does make me skeptical of the Internet Brought to It's Knees claims.

Re:Purely anecdotal...

[mhajicek]

Also anecdotal, but my access has been quite slow both at home and at work the past couple days. Though of course correlation...

Re:Purely anecdotal...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia Spamhaus DDoSes you!

ddos not that bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA is right, the DDoS was not that bad as far as the entire Internet is concerned. The submarine cable cuts in 2008 as well as some of the Tier-1 ISP like Sprint depeering with Cogent Communications also in that year led to far more disruption than this DDoS. Hell, the Internet was effectively partioned for a time over the mess with Cogent.

SPAMHaus Promo Stunt

[Anonymous Coward]

It's definitely a way for SPAMHaus to make the headlines. Whether it is proper conduct, especially for a trust-based organisation like SPAMHaus, is the real question.

DNSBL is not the way to fight spam. I've worked for several large ESP's, and we've had more issues with false positives and various DNSBL's blocking regular, solicited email everytime some angry recipient with a vengeace decided to file a spam-report, instead of just opting-out from the mailing they opted-in for themselves.

This has led to us using less and less DNSBL-related spam-filtering. Most of our spam-filters are now 'smart', using the recipient's own preferences to decide whether a mail should be blocked or not. I'm sure DNSBL's like spamhaus are feeling the heat, and stunts like these may give them the exposure they need to get some fresh customers.

But it's definitely sounds a bit 'shadey' to launch a misinformation-campaign for this, especially for an antispam-firm.

Re:SPAMHaus Promo Stunt

[khallow]

But it's definitely sounds a bit 'shadey' to launch a misinformation-campaign for this, especially for an antispam-firm.

What part of "launch a misinformation-campaign" doesn't sound "shadey"? Well, aside from the accusation coming from from an anonymous poster who doesn't bother to provide a shred of supporting evidence for the claim. That part doesn't sound the least bit shady.

Re:SPAMHaus Promo Stunt

[Anonymous Coward]

DNSBL is great for fighting spam -- *if* you find collateral damage acceptable.

As someone who had joe jobs cost a few thousand dollars years ago... I find this wholly appropriate. I *want* to opt in to DNSBL and hurt ISPs that host a spammer. If you affiliate with a ROKSO spammer -- I don't want my servers on your subnet. I don't want email from your subnet once you've had an opportunity to remove them and failed to do so.

Thing you have to understand is DNSBLs fight spam -- not "unlawful UCBE".

As someone who's been known to CC postmaster contacts, sales reps and such on spam reports, I've gotten a few angry replies and one or two threats of lawsuit that were laughed off.

This is what happens when I purchase a piece of software from you and you suddenly decide we have a 'relationship' -- I bought something, it got shipped via fedex, I signed, I'm done -- thank you for your participation. I wanted a particular piece of hardware, not a fucking date.

There are users that will click SPAM rather than unsubscribe. Well-- if you're contacting me, and it's not interesting or adding value... it's SPAM. I'll unsub from email lists I'm on, but if you're some marketer trying for "outreach" -- you aren't a friend. If your content was historically relevant, I'll unsub.

As a user of qmail, gmail, mailinator and bloody vikings addon...

Look -- 95% of the time I *know* who you got my address from. I can watch magazines buy and sell them, watch companies get acquired and see the lists change hands. I've watched comcast rebrand as xfinity and seen my email address get leaked somewhere in the process. I've watched credit card companies get breached and been told it's impossible.

And you know what? If you lose my email address, every single message from you that isn't from a customer service rep gets reported as SPAM. Because you didn't guard the resource I trusted you with.

I understand companies get bought, sold, legal obligations change.

But if you're sending irrelevant content to even 20% of your audience -- you're a spammer, and I'm going to treat you like one.

Not all users are willing to live with the consequences of such actions. Some business may object because it could cost customers.

Having seen spammers cause financial damages -- I *do* accept this.

Give me the DNSBL. I despise state sponsored or corporate censorship -- but I will more than happily choose to filter what I listen to.

Re:SPAMHaus Promo Stunt

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at an medium size ESP and I do not share your experience. I get 25 spamcop complaints per year and 20 are justified (of 700M emails). If we get 1 blocklisting per year I think it is much. Last time it was about a bought list we didn't detect at import time. Your customers should stick to the law and, in the end, the internet law: People only want to receive what they want to receive. The rest is spam so people have the right to complain.

The only blacklist I find unreasonable is URIBL because they refuse to say which customer caused the blacklisting. They flat out block our main URL, even though they have a greylist. All the others will at least share a subject line so you can identify the customer.

I don't buy your argument about 'smart' spamfilters. You, at an ESP, want 100% of your emails delivered (and not 90%). In weekends I get 99.7% of my mails accepted. And 0.1% of 0.3% of bounces are about 'possible spam'.

Total Internet bandwidth

[Alain Williams]

300Gb/s, what is that as a fraction of the total Internet bandwidth ? Without that number we don't know if it is a significant proportion of what is available. Maybe we should be asking for that figure round/close-to the Spamhaus servers.

By total I mean the core internet routers, not including those in outlying backwaters.

Re:Total Internet bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

Depending on how many decimal places you want to consider significant, it rounds to 0%.
According to a resource, the attack would've consumed slightly more bandwidth than a OC-48 / STM-16 / 2.5G SONET optical carrier cable. Alternatively, it is about 1/13th the bandwidth of a OC-768 / STM-256 optical carrier cable.

So, I think you need more than 5 significant digits for 300Gb/s to round to any number other than 0% of total internet bandwidth, but if there was only one cable between the source machines and the destination machine, it could've used up a noticeable chunk of that.

Re:Total Internet bandwidth

[btsfh]

It works out to 30 or fewer average 10G Internet links. Depending on where it hits it could take out a good chunk of many smaller peering exchanges, but any of the Major (Tier 1) ISP's run 80Gbps+ between nodes with 100Gbps links becoming more common, and the larger peering fabrics run multiple Tbps across their peering fabrics. Basically, it is large to many individual sites, but tiny for Internet scale.

Anecdote! I almost quit my job over this.

[StealthPanda]

On Tuesday afternoon, GMT-6, I could do exactly zero of my job functions, as none of my remote server connections would stay up for longer than 5-7 seconds. Not knowing what was happening, I did hours of troubleshooting on my own connection, before finally just calling it quits for the day.

I was about ready to just walk away out of frustration before things just seemed to magically fix themselves the following morning. So yes, I think this did affect parts of the internet as a whole, and not others. I am not surprised by this.

Re:Anecdote! I almost quit my job over this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because someone works on servers doesn't mean they're a networking guru. No need to be a jerk.

Re:Anecdote! I almost quit my job over this.

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to be a jerk.

You must be new here.

Re:Anecdote! I almost quit my job over this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because someone works on servers doesn't mean they're a networking guru

Knowing how to run a traceroute is basic knowledge, only a tiny bit more advanced than knowing what an IP address is, or how to use the ping command. If you don't know how to use a traceroute, then frankly speaking you should not a) be troubleshooting your network connection or b) making claims that your connection problems were caused by the attack mentioned in the article.

No need to be a jerk.

Welcome to the internet, Slashdot, and etc.

Wrong Slowdown

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't slowdown the internet. It slowed down Spamhaus and it may have slowed down the email delivery times of users of the Spamhaus block list.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

It was slow for Spamhaus

[donak]

If you tried to access the Spamhaus website, the DDoS was very effectively blocking that corner of the internet!

Re:It was slow for Spamhaus

[xgerrit]

If you tried to access the Spamhaus website, the DDoS was very effectively blocking that corner of the internet!

I still can't access cb3rob.com and cb3rob.net on two different ISPs, so I think this counts as a pyrrhic victory.

Nope....

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't eve know there was a giant DDOS attack going on until I read it in the news. Have not seen any slowdown here in the U.S.

Affect on spam?

[xgerrit]

So if the spammers botnets are busy with a ddos attack, has there been any measurable decrease in spam on the internet? I haven't seen any internet slowdowns, but I haven't seen any slowdown in spam either...

Re:Affect on spam?

[ShaunC]

Doesn't seem to be much of a difference according to Spamcop stats. For all the hullabaloo, whatever spammer lives at Cyberbunker doesn't seem to be a very big player.

Stats on AMS-IX

[mpol]

The statistics that the AMS-IX gives out do not show any rise in network traffic, maybe even a slowdown.

Stats

For a Dutch provider, you would at least suspect a slight increase in traffic on the Dutch Internet Exchange.

These aren't the droids you're looking for

[Anonymous Coward]

The illuminati and the Bilderbergs would love for all of us to believe the Internet is immune to cyber attack.

The truth is, however, that we are, as usual, being duped by our own "leaders." The truth is that the Internet is in shambles and is ready to come crashing down any minute, at which point society will break down and give them the excuse they need to finally implement Agenda 21 and the total enslavement of the entire Human population.

Stop lying to yourselves!

we saw email slow down

[mixed_signal]

We and two partner firms saw a big increase in email latency for the afternoon, up to a few hours delay in some cases. General connectivity (vpn, vnc etc.) was not affected, though.

Slow Internet connection speeds

[grantspassalan]

The Internet connection speed for many is so slow already, that they would not even notice if the Internet speed as a whole dropped by 90%. In the evening, watching Netflix or any other video is a pain. That is why we still get DVDs in the mail.

people slag DNSBLs... but need to learn

[Onymous Coward]

People like to hear that DNSBLs are a problem. And then they like to repeat the accusations. Not sure how folks have gotten attached to the idea, but I'm certain it's not from detailed investigation.

For one thing, don't conflate the mechanism with the implementations. Anyone can publish a DNSBL. You could. And you could make your list all false positives. It would be a bad idea for people to subscribe to your list. Caveat emptor, right?

And that's why you get false positives. You've chosen badly. And you're not using the lists for scoring — sounds like you're using them as final arbiters.

The "trick" to getting DNSBLs to work is to choose wisely. You have to do some research into how the lists are made, and since it's you who will be blocking emails based on the information provided by the lists, it's your responsibility to understand the nature of that information. What are the listing/delisting policies? If you don't know, you're not being a smart consumer. "... everytime some angry recipient with a vengeace decided to file a spam-report ..." Hopefully you know better than to think that every DNSBL is made this way.

And the "smart" spam filters, so you know, are resource intensive. Instead, it's possible to eliminate lots of spam using extremely low resource checks. Validating the SMTP "HELO" (requiring they give FQDN, non-bare address literals, not your domain or IP, and a couple other checks as per RFC) will nix half of spam off the bat. And you can eliminate another third of spam (two-thirds the spam passing HELO checks) by using (well-chosen) DNSBLs. DNS lookups are cheap (and you can download zone files of you're worried about outages). That's 83% of spam cheaply nixed, all before you even get to "MAIL FROM:". If your "smart" checks are building Markov chains and feeding a naive Bayes classifier, that's gonna take time and effort in processing power, in disk resource, in procedures and staff attention/knowledge for maintenance.

DNSBLs are clearly a way to fight spam. But you have to know what they are and how to use them.

Shopping for DNSBLs takes effort, it's true. If you want to do a good job. Once upon a time, Al Iverson's http://www.dnsbl.info/ was up-to-date and gave wonderful statistics on success rates of the various lists (using his (rather knowledgeable) measures). Doing the research now without such a resource is much more challenging.

I use Spamhaus's XBL and SpamCop's SCBL. That's it. Combined, those give me the aforementioned inexpensive 33% spam reduction. (If I used them before the HELO checks the reduction would probably be near 75%, my guess.) I vetted the lists for efficacy (true positives v. false positives), policy (how they're made, listing and delisting), and longevity/reputability. I've been using these guys for 5 years without a hiccup.

I noticed

[Billly Gates]

Youtube for listening to music while I work is painful. It can't buffer at all and I have a FIOS connection. I had to reformat my computer and installing Office over the internet and patching the 3 gigs of data for SWTOR was capped at 300k even if I have a fiber connection.

I rebooted my router a few times and ran ipconfig /flushdns but to no avail.

However, none of my activity uses European servers or DNS so I highly doubt this is related at all. Google did say it was absorbing some of the traffic because they are nice guys and do not want to see European internet shutdown and this *might* explain youtube buffering issues.

So I am skeptical unless European traffic is being rerouted to North American servers which are chocking the routers but I do not think the pipes over the atlantic could handle that.

Re:I noticed

[ahabswhale]

lol...youtube almost always has buffering issues. It's why I use it as little as possible. It's been a problem since the service first existed.

Re:answers within

[hxnwix]

Excellent post A++++++++++++ would scroll past again!!!!

Bad conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

> The argument against the original claim include the fact that reports of Internet users seeing slowdowns came not from service providers, but the DDoS mitigation service CloudFlare, which signed up Spamhaus as a customer last week.

Yes, much like how a bullet does not kill you. It's the bleeding that does it.

If Cloudflare is servicing a large portion of internet sites, and Cloudflare is slow, then a large portion of internet sites is slow.

thing is..

[WGFCrafty]

The tier 1 providers I read about downplayed it, but then again they have a lot of incentive to downplay it.

slow internet

[Anonymous Coward]

it could be abused to "centralize" (*) email delivery, which would make snoopign on email traffic that much easier.
anyways, on linux with a static ip or some dynamic dns updater running there's really no reason
why email cannot be sent and received DIRECTLY by each user (that is without having to go thru
a outside SMTP (sending) or outside IMAP/POP3 (receiving) server).
no system is perfect. the real physical mailbox in front of your house (people still use this) can also
be overwhelmed.
(*) by having blocklists, you pay to be a "good guy", who of course doesn't hav eto co-operate with the "authorities"
due to size (tongue in cheek).

CloudFlare advertising

[Midnight_Falcon]

I like CloudFlare, but it seems like they exaggerated the scope of this incident in order to get publicity. It's a Startup -- so any exposure seems like good exposure, and they have a lot of operating expenses (bandwidth/hardware/etc), so getting on some VC's radar for a second investment round might be a priority. I'm in the network of the founders on LinkedIn and she shared the NY Times article about the incident asking (not directed towards europeans) all her contacts if the internet was running slowly this weekend, and that's why. Although, no one I know had noticed such a thing -- and I host a few sites in London, and work with a remote team in the Middle East -- and they work on what we consider the weekend ( Sunday, they have a different weekend starting Friday).

IMHO, the question "was your internet running slowly?" was just a humblebrag to point to how they were featured in the NYT -- which is very telling in relation to the information in TFA here.

Mine has been horribly slow

[gravis777]

Mine has been unbearably slow. I've called up my provider twice. Problem is, speed tests to their servers show I am gettign my advertised speed. If I do speed tests to nearby servers, I am seeing this, but if I go outside of my geographic area, speeds start taking a huge hit. Connecting to most speed test servers on the internet, I am seeing 1/20th of the speed I am paying for (I usually get close). I used to be able to stream HDX from Vudo no problem while surfing, but now, Amazon and Netflix SD buffer like crazy. No matter how much I reset stuff on my end, or have my ISP force a restart on their end, I am still seeing this.

It's even worse on my phone with 4G. I can normally stream movies or music or watch HD Youtube streams with no issue, but over the past week or two, my 4G has been practically unusable. Forget internet radio or any of the other streaming services that I normally have no issues with. A 1 minute Youtube video in SD is now taking about 3 minutes to buffer.

So yeah, I have noticed an incredible hit in speeds over the past couple of weeks.

It's not I folks: It's Jeremiah Cornelius... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS is why he's doing it & proof of it, here -> http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3585927&cid=43295193 when others pointed out Jeremiah Cornelius forgot to submit one of the "first post spams" (masquerading as myself, by posting as AC & using some old posts of mine or other b.s. he put up), & JC mistakenly submitted one of the impersonations of myself as his registered 'luser' name here on /. forums.

Pretty pitiful actually, but like every up to no good idiot does? He screwed up & submitted it under his registered 'luser' name here, instead of his ac submittals he's been doing.

* Jeremiah Cornelius: DO YOURSELF, and the rest of us, A GIANT FAVOR MAN: Seek professional psychiatric help!

(Since Jeremiah Cornelius obviously can't get over the fact he made a spelling error on what it is HE ALLEGEDLY DID FOR A LIVING? That's not MY fault... it's HIS!)

APK

P.S.=> I seriously must have dusted JC (in his mind @ least) for his BAD spelling error & it "got his goat"...

I.E.-> Catching what he claimed to do as a job, for YEARS he left "PENETRATION" (correct) spelled as "PENTRATION" (incorrect) on his resume on LinkedIn & I pointed it out as he & his friends trolled me as usual (webmistressrachel, gmhowell, & crew (probably ALL JC no doubt using alterate emails or TOR to do it as a possible - I've caught "them & theirs" doing it before, ala Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person))).

So THAT is what has gotten his goat in a technical debate & his "geek angst" could only come up with *trying* to "impersonate me" in every news thread on /. for the month of March 2013 so far!

(Just to attempt to 'discredit me' as a spammer here obviously)

Doing so, by posting that "$10,000 challenge" &/or reposts of my old posts on hosts file value to end users into EVERY SINGLE NEWS ARTICLE POSTED on /. ...

It's all I can think of that *might* cause such a mentally troubled 'reaction' like the Jeremiah Cornelius is doing & there's NO QUESTION he's the one doing this spamming of nearly every posted article masquerading as myself...!

... apk

Youtubedown download script recommendation

[girlinatrainingbra]

Re: youtube almost always has buffering issues
.
May I suggest a command line tool for off-line downloads to your local directory: http://www.jwz.org/hacks/youtubedown

as described at http://www.jwz.org/hacks/#youtubedown is a nice script that you can run on the command line.