> > We're talking about an intentional DDoS attack (yes, it's just
> > HTTP hits,
> > but they are created for the sole purpose of using up the
> > resources of the
> > victim's website), and the owners of the computers that are involved all
> > agreed to participate.
No, we are not talking about a DDos attack. Lycos is not attempting to use up
the resources of the spammers website. Rather they are looking at consuming a
considerable portion of those resources. By the statistics they are showing it
appears they may have set that threshold at 85%.
>Hence my position that there is no legal precedent... since up to now, the
>participants in the most famous DDoS's could not be considered as having
>"agreed to participate". But that's all changed, and there is an unknown...
No, the picket anaolgy still holds because this is an organized protests with
what appear to be "reasonable" rules and safeguards put in place. This is
nothing like some miscreant hi-jacking unwitting web surfers machines to launch
an attack against a "innocent" victim, but rather a coordinated protests
against demonstrated law (rule) breakers
>if there were legal action against Lycos, would/could the participants be
>named as defendants in addition to Lycos... the question that
First there would have to be a lawsuit against Lycos to identify who the users
of their screensaver are. Not a lawsuit that would likely be won. See
Napster, Kazaa, etc...
>Again, talking strictly about Lycos, we're not really talking about a
>DDoS... but it's easier to refer to it that way. And Len's right... if
>Lycos sets the bar at a certain height, others will come along and raise the
>bar, or simply "also participate" which would have the end result of a DDoS
>when all participants are combined.
No, Len is probably wrong. It looks like Lycos is monitoring the available
bandwidth at the sites it is directing its HTTP request traffic at. By
themselves it looks like they are looking to consume 85% of the bandwidth at
the outlaw site. Therefore they no how much traffic to direct at it by either
increasing the traffic or decreasing it. Therefore, if another site (or two,
or three) starts doing the same thing then Lycos would merely throttle back the
amount of packets they are sending at it to keep the the target site at 85%
saturation.
That of course does not address the issue if someone else does the same thing
and is not as "reasonable" as Lycos is being in allowing the site to continue
to have 15% of capacity to continue their operations. Certainly sounds like
Len would be in favor of the 100% attack that he is accusing Lycos of doing
(and which they are not).
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