As most will have already noticed, there are some sever issues happening with SDA today. I don't know if it's a DOS attack, general internet issues or server issues.
Anyway, I'm sure the ISP will have emailed Kate about it, but as they won't email us, I guess we'll just have to live with it for a bit.
From what I've see, you can probably expect to time out when commenting, or timing out when loading SDA. I'd suggest copying your comment prior to posting just in case it times out. Then you can reload and repost if necessary.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
lance
Please excuse this illerate but, just what is a DOS attack?
Posted by: Malcolm Cross at June 17, 2008 2:23 PMThere's a Liberal in the Woodwork!! Check your hard drive for "Grit."
Posted by: Lone Ranger at June 17, 2008 2:28 PMDOS is Denial of Service. Basically, setting up a computer to auto-dial the same page continuously in multiple windows. It uses up all of the communications bandwidth to keep "normal" users from being able to access the site. Think of a telemarketer that calls your number with an auto-redial on 2 or 3 phone lines at the same time, and how hard it would be for a friend to call you at the same time.
Posted by: C_Miner at June 17, 2008 2:38 PMDOS is Denial of Service. Basically, setting up a computer to auto-dial the same page continuously in multiple windows. It uses up all of the communications bandwidth to keep "normal" users from being able to access the site. Think of a telemarketer that calls your number with an auto-redial on 2 or 3 phone lines at the same time, and how hard it would be for a friend to call you at the same time.
Posted by: C_Miner at June 17, 2008 2:41 PMDOS is Denial of Service. Basically, setting up a computer to auto-dial the same page continuously in multiple windows. It uses up all of the communications bandwidth to keep "normal" users from being able to access the site. Think of a telemarketer that calls your number with an auto-redial on 2 or 3 phone lines at the same time, and how hard it would be for a friend to call you at the same time.
Posted by: C_Miner at June 17, 2008 2:44 PMMalcolm, you can wiki or google these terms, but here's a loose explanation.
DOS is a Denial of Service attack. It is usually initiated by a script-kiddie on a single machine to fill an Internet pipe or an Internet service/server so that others can't use it. It's lame.
DDOS are Distributed Denial of Service attacks. These are usually viruses or trojans that have infiltrated Windows machines and at a specific point in time each infected machine will launch it's own DOS attack.
Think of it this way, if every 1/100th of a second you could submit a comment to SDA it would grind the system to a halt. This is because each comment has to be checked for spam, if your comments pass then the individual post pages have to be rebuilt. This is a server intensive operation and would likely grind the SDA service to a halt.
DOS attacks are relatively easy to stop, DDOS are not.
The most common defence are limit matching rules at the firewall. These watch for multiple connections from an IP address in a very short period of time. This works fine for DOS attacks and inelegant DDOS attacks. The more elegant DDOS though time their attacks with respect to the other infected machines.
An example, a relatively small number of infiltrated machines (say 500) each posting once every 5 seconds with a 1/100th of a second interval between machines.
A simple scenario like that would not be stopped by most firewall limit matches, would fill the SDA internet pipe, kill the webserver and fill the process quotas allowed to SDA on the server.
But like I said, I don't know if that is the reason.
Cheers,
lance
Whoops, sorry folks. It didn't even get 1/2 through the load bar before it timed out. Please expunge the extras.
Posted by: C_Miner at June 17, 2008 3:00 PMGosh, Kate's barely out the door, and all Hell breaks loose.
Kate, come back!! ;-)
Posted by: batb at June 17, 2008 3:23 PMWay to go lance, you broke SDA!
Posted by: grok at June 17, 2008 4:20 PMif date palms grew near masada. there may have been a climate shift.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25123015/
DOS was originally the short cut for "disc operating system" which reverts back to the floppy days.
Posted by: spike at June 17, 2008 7:26 PMDOS was originally the short cut for "Disc Operating System" which reverts back to the floppy days.
Posted by: spike at June 17, 2008 7:28 PMDidn't Al Gore invent the DOS attach? That's the reason for it, eh!
Posted by: Orlin at June 17, 2008 8:17 PMDoS attacks are caused by Global Warming.
Posted by: Bart at June 18, 2008 12:58 AMYou can have a denial of service attack facing your own computer screen.
It*s rare but interesting . . .
You hit a key to do something and the function menu appears and vanishes in a fraction of a second before you can select.
It*s as though your video card was refreshing every 1/10th second.
The only way to recover is to re-start the computer and hope the video stops looping when it comes up again.
An update from *FlashPlayer* did that to me recently.
I resent Intel, Adobe, RealPlayer, screwing up on my time. = TG
PS: RealPlayer is like malware. Get rid of it. The load on your CPU will diminish. = TG
Posted by: TG at June 18, 2008 4:23 PMPS: RealPlayer is like malware. Get rid of it. The load on your CPU will diminish.
Posting comments is slow. . . coffee break. = TG = TG
Posted by: TG at June 18, 2008 4:23 PMDoes this help??
Movable Type error report:
==========================
Rebuild failed: Renaming tempfile '/home/kate/public_html/archives/008918.html.new' failed: Renaming '/home/kate/public_html/archives/008918.html.new' to '/home/kate/public_html/archives/008918.html' failed: No such file or directory
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