

Wikileaks Website, Pummeled by Attacks, Loses Home - hornokplease
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40455720

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trotsky
They're now sitting on bahnhof.net in Stockholm. If they were really getting
10Gb/s inboud DOS on AWS perhaps they just grew tired of paying the AWS fees -
0.10/GB - so $450/hr just in inbound traffic. Maybe now that the biggest media
exposure is over they figure they can live with a little worse performance.

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mquander
That is truly a godawful AP article.

Here's the prior discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1956981>

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fauigerzigerk
Senators calling hosting companies to have websites shut down? Um, wasn't
there something called the rule of law?

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tptacek
Don't hyperventilate. Anybody, from a Senator to a high school janitor, can
"call a hosting company to have a website shut down". Nobody made Amazon
comply.

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fauigerzigerk
It would be great if you could keep the debate civil. Mr. Lieberman is not
just anybody. He is an official of the state with the power to hurt Amazon's
business interests in many ways that are not available to a school janitor.
But instead of using the great legal and legislative powers and resources he
has, he chose to use his personal influence to suppress information he doesn't
like.

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tptacek
That's my point. Exactly which "legal" or "legislative" powers has Lieberman
wielded against Amazon? None. As far as I can tell, he's just bloviating.
Senators don't lose the right to bloviate when they're elected.

Rupert Murdoch can harm Amazon's business interests in far worse ways than Joe
Lieberman, and with far less accountability.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Use the courts or the legislative process is exactly what he should have tried
to do. In that case, all the safeguards put in place by the constitution would
have been properly applied. People would have looked into whether or not
shutting down a media outlet that is critical of the government violates the
first ammendment. That's how it should work.

Things should not happen on the personal say so of populist politicians, much
less things like shutting down critics of the government. That undermines the
rule of law and the separation of powers.

That's my opinion, but judging by the votes you get here, Russia style
politics is rather popular in the US as well.

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tptacek
You think that it's better for Lieberman to have tried to _legislate away
hosting of Wikileaks_ \--- legislation that very well might have passed in
this climate --- than for him to have used his "influence" as one of America's
least-beloved Senators to shame a multi-billion dollar company that probably
planned to jettison Wikileaks anyways?

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lhnz
Pardon my ignorance but is there really nothing that can be done to escape
DDOS attacks other than simply buying more bandwidth? What stops a criminal
entity or government with enough resources from upping the size of the attack
even more and prolonging it for months or even years?

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nkassis
Nothing... that I can think off. DDOS attacks are horrible for exactly this
reason, if you can find the source and kill it as close to home as possible
than you have a chance but other than that, wikileaks is in a really bad
position right now.

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dstein
You gotta hand it to Wikileaks, they've got balls. But I'm afraid it's all
going to be for naught. Nobody likes to be told, let alone admit, their
government/banks/military is corrupt. No good will come from any of this
because the average person really doesn't give a damn.

~~~
ergo98
_Nobody likes to be told, let alone admit, their government/banks/military is
corrupt. No good will come from any of this because the average person really
doesn't give a damn._

Then....why is this wikileaks business a front-page headlining story pretty
much _everywhere_? Doesn't that completely counter your claim?

Further, the only reason people might not want to be told is that they already
long knew it. Wikileaks hopefully has something pretty salacious to keep the
interest, because thus far the response has been "Wow....is that it? I
suspected much worse."

~~~
dstein
_Then....why is this wikileaks business a front-page headlining story pretty
much everywhere? Doesn't that completely counter your claim?_

Just because "its on the news" doesn't prove that anybody gives damn. I don't
see citizens rallying in favor of Wikileaks and calling for the overthrow of
the US government.

~~~
ergo98
The news prints what people want to read about. It's a supply/demand industry.

However what in the leaks demand that people call for the overthrow of the US
government? Thus far it has been entirely predictable, tame, boring cables
from individual offices and subjective interpretations. BFD. Seriously, BFD.
It's like reading a diary, and that's what's interesting, but there has been
nothing that is unexpected.

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hnal943
Except when the world reads _this_ diary, spies will be discovered, people
will die and other countries will refuse to cooperate with the United States.

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adamfeldman
Companies like Arbor Networks have products like Peakflow[1] that are supposed
to mitigate DDoS attacks by filtering the traffic. How are they not using
tools such as those?

[1] [http://www.arbornetworks.com/en/delivering-in-cloud-ddos-
pro...](http://www.arbornetworks.com/en/delivering-in-cloud-ddos-protection-
services.html)

Disclaimer: I will be interning at Arbor this summer.

~~~
pinksoda
Most of them can't handle really large attacks. Wikileaks was supposedly
getting hit with more than 10Gbps, which is right around the maximum Peakflow
can handle.

When an attack this big targets a small business, they usually just null route
the servers, essentially sending all data into a blackhole. The downside is
that their website will be inaccessible by legitimate users. The upside is
that they don't have to pay for the used bandwidth, which is pricey at 10Gbps.

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tybris
Hmz, there are a lot of reasons why Amazon could have given them the boot
(hitting usage limits due to DoS, payment problems, attacks on the whole
Amazon infrastructure). I'd like to hear their story.

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aneth
Seems like hosting with a US company was a bad idea to begin with as any
informant on the US would worry about Amazon being subpoenaed.

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nkassis
I don't think that wikileaks really worries about someone taking their servers
at Amazon. The data on them isn't secret at all.

They have copies of the data and gave copies away as encrypted volumes on
bittorent.

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aneth
The identity of informants would be pretty secret. (Still waiting for
wikileaksleaks.org).

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nkassis
I'd be surprised if this was held on the server hosting the data.

