the difference between 85% and 100% may not be worth the change in terminology... In my own mind I do make a distinction between "denial" of service and "degradation" of service, but in context, it probably doesn't mean much at all.
> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of David Riddle > Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 4:06 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] Lycos screensaver tackles spam websites > > > > > 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). > > > > > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Sent via the WebMail system at microworks.net > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html > List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
