Is there a plan to DoS defacement sites off the Internet?

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/21782.html

By John Leyden
Posted: 20/09/2001 at 15:28 GMT

Is there a co-ordinated attempt taking place to force defacement
archives off the Internet?

After Safemode.org told us that a distributed denial of service attack
against it had caused its ISP to drop it, the question needs to be
asked.

The attack against Safemode.org, as described to us by its admin and
co-founder Mystakill, occurred at the same time as attacks against
Alldas.de, which also resulted in that site becoming unavailable.
There are some subtle differences in the mode of attack though.

Mystakill told us that Safemode.org had become the victim of a "land"
(or indirect) attack.

"The attackers send a DDoS spoofing our IP address as the source to
many Web sites, he said. "The victims of the DDoS then respond to us
or our ISP [BullsEyeTelco] about the problem.

"Our ISP or the up stream provider contacts us about our server being
the aggressor of these attacks and demanded that the server be taken
offline."

Most security related Web sites are subject to attack by s'kiddies but
the suspicion is that Safemode.org and Alldas.de were targeted by
people who (for whatever reason) wanted to see defacement archives
taken off the Internet.

Defacement archives provide a valuable resource for the security
community though they can be a difficult tenant for ISPs who have to
cope with flames about port scanning, high bandwidth demands as well
as the occasional DoS attack. It's also a hassle to those running the
sites, which is one of the main reasons Attrition.org decided to drop
its defacement archive earlier this year.

So, as it stands, both Safemode.org and Alldas.de are looking for an
ISP to take them on. Neither is optimistic about getting back online
anytime soon, if ever.

Who gains from this?

S'kiddies must be pleased their work is recorded on the Web for all to
see, so we don't consider them as the likely perps. It makes far more
sense that government and big business would prefer that these mirror
sites "go away" so that the exploits of hackers are not exhibited or
glorified.

Mystakill was quite willing to believe this theory.

"I would not put that past the US government," he said.

"We have hundreds of .gov and .mil sites mirrored, if you where a big
security company or entire government would you want you blunders
archived for all time?"

Quite.



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