Good points. I think you're right. Does this call for spec modification? On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 9:17 AM, James Holderness <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Jan 8, 5:49 pm, Jeff Lindsay <[email protected]> wrote: > > Think of your callback URL like a webpage ... you can't really control > how > > hard it's hit (hence slashdot effect, etc). You can add rate limiting in > > front of it if you're really worried. So a) don't subscribe to publishers > > you don't trust to not flood you, b) deal with it appropriately as HTTP > if > > they do and you still want to subscribe to them. > > > > I don't think it's the hub's responsibility. > > I have to disagree. I think this is very much the hub's > responsibility. > > A typical PuSH subscriber could be a web-based feed reader like Google > Reader or Bloglines. The choice of who to subscribe to is made by > users of the service, not the service itself. The service basically > has to trust every feed that a user might want to subscribe to, so (a) > is not really an option. For PuSH to be usable, a subscriber must be > able to rely on the hub not to flood it. > > From a legal point of view I'm kind of curious who would be liable if > a hub flooded a server off the internet (perhaps resulting in loss of > business) as a result of unwanted pings. > > For the sake of argument, assume that the pings were from a feed that > the client *hadn't* subscribed to (i.e. a deliberate attack propagated > through the hub). It seems to me that the hub is responsible for the > loss of business suffered by the subscriber. The hub could in turn try > and sue the attacker (assuming they could be traced), but the initial > liability still lies with the hub IMO. > > Obviously the law will differ from country to country, but if I were > running a hub, and one of my servers took someone's site out by > flooding them with pings, I would hope I had a better defence than > just shrugging and saying "not my responsibility". > > This is not the same as the slashdot effect, which is a legitimate (if > unexpected) flood of connections from multiple sources. > > Regards > James > -- Jeff Lindsay http://webhooks.org -- Make the web more programmable http://shdh.org -- A party for hackers and thinkers http://tigdb.com -- Discover indie games http://progrium.com -- More interesting things
