Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

This is an amazingly weak DDoS, put your site behind CloudFlare or similar free service and go take a nap. They'll tank this without raising an eyebrow.



probably because I've been playing an mmo, but i like the use of the word 'tank' here


The etymology here is actually really interesting. The term "tank" was an Americanism for a swimming pool once upon a time, and the etymology of that is pretty well-known: it was imported from a Portuguese word meaning "pond" which ultimately came from India [1]. The same source quotes a 1960s usage of the term for "failure" in the sport of Tennis.

The term actually seems to come from a 1920s boxing euphemism [2]: when a boxer is not actually knocked out but voluntarily lays down on the ground, it was called "a dive" for obvious reasons; euphemistically some people called this "going into the tank," since you'd dive into a pool.

How did this start referring to the vehicle? Again, back to [1], there was once a memo "recommending the proposed "caterpillar machine-gun destroyer" machines be entrusted to an organization "which, for secrecy, shall be called the 'Tank Supply Committee,' ..." and the rest is history.

[1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tank

[2] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...


Yep, true, it's planned. But sometimes their captcha page tend to block some legitimate trafic...

It's not that impressive because we read everyday articles about crazy DDoS big companies are able to mitigate. But when it's the website your responsible for, whatever the number of requests/sec, you just need to find way to manage it, and CloudFlare can have some weird side effects.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: