Feeds will be intermittent

[dave]

There is a DDoS attack going on right now that is causing intermittent issues with our upstream ISP.

Expect feeds to be intermittent for a while until this is resolved.

[Hollis]

So I noticed.
DDoS = Distributed Denial of Service
aka 'hacked'

Good luck Dave

[KSYR-pjr]

So I noticed.
DDoS = Distributed Denial of Service
aka 'hacked'

Hacked is not a term that typically describes the receiver of a DDoS; they, as in the upstream ISP in LiveATC's case,  are just a victim.   The ISP's server is on the receiving end of an uninterrupted and coordinated storm of packets sent by thousands of zombie computers, which are most likely Windows computers compromised by a Trojan and owned by naive computer users across the world.  Any web-facing server, i.e any website or intermediary server that sends traffic to websites, can be victims of a DDoS attack.

There was a fascinating personal tale written by a well-respected security guru, Steve Gibson of a DDoS attack against his site.  It read like an exciting drama.  I was going to post the link but I could not find it on his site.  This occurred back in 2000 or so, but the story was such a classic that I expected it to live forever on GRC.com.  Oh, well - if someone runs across it please post the link here.

[kea001]

I don't know if this is what you were looking for but it's Steve Gibson explaining the issue to google talks.
This is Security Now!, Episode 8, for October 6, 2005
http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-008.pdf

There are links in the document for audio.

[KSYR-pjr]

Thank you for trying, but that wasn't it.

This was a webpage he put together filled with easy to read text telling the story of how he was alerted to a DDoS, and his subsequent online investigation that led him to a secret chat room filled with nefarious computer wizards, including the one who orchestrated the attack on his site.  You could almost hear the "oh damn" that fell out of that person's mouth when Gibson addressed him in this chat room and stated he was able to reverse engineer one of the 'bots used to attack GRC.com and followed it right to the perp.   Anyone with even the basics of computer knowledge would have enjoyed the story.

I cannot imagine he took the story down, but it seems that way.

[KSYR-pjr]

I just emailed the GRC.com site (Steve Gibson does not himself return emails due to his limited time) and received a very quick reply - the story was pulled from their site since they felt the information in it was too old.   Disappointing, I must admit.

[Biff]

Is this it?

http://www.crime-research.org/library/grcdos.pdf

[KSYR-pjr]

Hey, Biff, thank you!  That is it.  How did you find it?