RE: DDoS attack with blackmail

[Jean St-Laurent via NANOG <nanog () nanog org>]

I don’t believe that these companies are complicit at high level. 

My guess is that there are some business salesmen working there that needs to fulfill their monthly quota of new 
clients. 

 

What is usually common, is that when face by a DDoS for the first time without the  proper tooling, it sounds like it’s 
an impossible task to solve. The knowledge on internet is pretty limited on the topic. 

It takes months and sometimes years to configure all the DDoS gates. Rolland’s ppt is a nice place to start as it has 
valuable knowledge. It’s just tough to figure out what is best for you.

 

The truth is, it will be more beneficial to your organisation in the medium/long term if you start learning and 
improving your DDoS defenses now than to rely 100% on DDoS mitigators. 

These companies are fantastic when you protect slow assets like Credit card transactions. The customer don’t really 
care if his transaction to validate the CC takes 4 seconds instead of 3.

 

In the end, DDoS mitigations is not more complex than what you are used to do daily. Protect your routers, protect the 
control-plane, protect the SSH lines, etc. It’s just a different kind of protections.

 

Let me know if you need some advices or hints, because I’ve spent some freaking long hours fighting them and together 
we have a better chance to win and not pay ransom from blackmails. 

I don’t have all the answers on DDoS, but maybe I have the one that you are looking for.

 

The moment you become very resilient to DDoS attacks, your customers will thank you and also support staff that will 
see the DDoS bounce like mosquitoes on the windshield of your car at 90 Mph.

 

Start learning now and start improving your DDoS. This won’t go away anytime soon.

 

Jean

 

 

From: jim deleskie <deleskie () gmail com> 
Sent: May 24, 2021 12:38 PM
To: Jean St-Laurent <jean () ddostest me>
Cc: NANOG Operators' Group <nanog () nanog org>
Subject: Re: DDoS attack with blackmail

 

While I have no design to engage in over email argument over how much latency people can actually tolerate, I will 
simply state that most people have a very poor understanding of it and how much additional latency is really introduced 
by DDoS mitigation.

 

As for implying that DDoS mitigation companies are complicit or involved in attacks, while not the first time i heard 
that crap it's pretty offensive to those that work long hours for years dealing with the garbage.  If you honestly 
believe anyone your dealing with is involved with launching attacks you clearly have not done your research into 
potential partners.

 

 

 

On Sat., May 22, 2021, 11:20 a.m. Jean St-Laurent via NANOG, <nanog () nanog org <mailto:nanog () nanog org> > wrote:

Some industries can’t afford that extra delay by DDoS mitigation vendors.

 

The video game industry is one of them and there might be others that can’t tolerate these extra ms. Telemedicine, 
video-conference, fintech, etc.

 

As a side note, my former employer in video game was bidding for these vendors offering DDoS protection. While bidding, 
we were hit with abnormal patterns. As soon as we chose one vendors those very tricky DDoS patterns stopped.

I am not saying they are working on both side, but still the coincidence was interesting. In the end, we never used 
them because they were not able to perfectly block the threat without impacting all the others projects.

 

I think these mitigators are nice to have as a very last resort. I believe what is more important for Network Operators 
is: to be aware of this, to be able to detect it, mitigate it and/or minimize the impact. It’s like magic, where did 
that rabbit go?

 

The art of war taught me everything there is to know about DDoS attacks even if it was written some 2500 years ago.

 

I suspect that the attack that impacted Baldur’s assets was a very easy DDoS to detect and block, but can’t confirm.

 

@Baldur: do you care to share some metrics?

 

Jean

 

From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+jean=ddostest.me () nanog org <mailto:ddostest.me () nanog org> > On Behalf Of Jean 
St-Laurent via NANOG
Sent: May 21, 2021 10:52 AM
To: 'Lady Benjamin Cannon of Glencoe, ASCE' <lb () 6by7 net <mailto:lb () 6by7 net> >; 'Baldur Norddahl' 
<baldur.norddahl () gmail com <mailto:baldur.norddahl () gmail com> >
Cc: 'NANOG Operators' Group' <nanog () nanog org <mailto:nanog () nanog org> >
Subject: RE: DDoS attack with blackmail

 

I also recommend book Art of War from Sun Tzu.

 

All the answers to your questions are in that book.

 

Jean

 

From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+jean=ddostest.me () nanog org <mailto:nanog-bounces+jean=ddostest.me () nanog org> > On 
Behalf Of Lady Benjamin Cannon of Glencoe, ASCE
Sent: May 20, 2021 7:18 PM
To: Baldur Norddahl <baldur.norddahl () gmail com <mailto:baldur.norddahl () gmail com> >
Cc: NANOG Operators' Group <nanog () nanog org <mailto:nanog () nanog org> >
Subject: Re: DDoS attack with blackmail

 

20 years ago I wrote an automatic teardrop attack.  If your IP spammed us 5 times, then a script would run, knocking 
the remote host off the internet entirely.

 

Later I modified it to launch 1000 teardrop attacks/second…

 

Today,  contact the FBI.

 

And get a mitigation service above your borders if you can.

 

 

—L.B.

 

Ms. Lady Benjamin PD Cannon of Glencoe, ASCE

6x7 Networks & 6x7 Telecom, LLC 

CEO 

lb () 6by7 net <mailto:lb () 6by7 net> 

"The only fully end-to-end encrypted global telecommunications company in the world.”

FCC License KJ6FJJ




 

On May 20, 2021, at 12:26 PM, Baldur Norddahl <baldur.norddahl () gmail com <mailto:baldur.norddahl () gmail com> > 
wrote:

 

Hello

 

We got attacked by a group that calls themselves "Fancy Lazarus". They want payment in BC to not attack us again. The 
attack was a volume attack to our DNS and URL fetch from our webserver.

 

I am interested in any experience in fighting back against these guys.

 

Thanks,

 

Baldur