Signal Boost

[james_davis_nicoll]

Originally posted by deathpixie at Signal Boost: Return of the DDoS

For those wanting to know more about the recent DDoS attacks, yes, it looks like it was the Russian government trying to shut down the dissidents again.

As I said last time, while it's frustrating not to have access, LJ is a lot more than a social network platform. From the article:

"LiveJournal isn’t just a social network. It’s also a platform for organizing civic action. Dozens of network projects and groups mobilize people to solve specific problems — from defending the rights of political prisoners to saving endangered historic architecture in Moscow."

So while I know many are considering the move over to Dreamwidth and other such sites, supporting LJ is a way we can help support those who use it for more than a writing/roleplaying/social venue.


Also, as a FYI, LJ is giving paid users effected by the outage two weeks of paid time as compensation.

Comments

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

This attack was so powerful that it didn’t even reach LiveJournal servers. It hit the servers of our providers, Qwest and Verizon, and for several hours their data centers were completely cut off from the world.” The intensity of the attack, which used thousands of computers largely in Latin America infected by a virus, was about four times stronger than the previous attack.

This doesn't seem like a good idea, crashing the servers of large companies in other countries, as well as interfering with the computers of citizens in other countries, for your own governmental ends. Seems like there could be a lot of problematic repercussions if this continues.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I've been wondering if somebody could get the UN to at least make a pro forma declaration that infecting the computers of uninvolved third parties with malware to attack your internal or external enemies is not cool.

And my impulse to complain about this is checked by thinking "First World problem" but I strongly suspect it is not just a First World problem.

[seawasp]

"First World Problem"?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

You know, like when you complain about any problem less severe than your kid dying of diarrhea after you got blown up by unexploded cluster munitions.

[seawasp]

Oh. I figure people complain about what's wrong with their lives based on their own baseline. The other direction gets really silly, like "Eat your vegetables, there are children starving in [fill in blank]" which never impressed me even as a kid.