On Jan 12, 12:52 pm, Blaine Cook <[email protected]> wrote:
> How is this scenario at all different than any random DoS attack
> (intentional or unintentional)? Anyone can flood any HTTP endpoint
> they choose with requests;

The difference is that most people can't just perform a DoS attack
directly. If I were to try and flood someone's server from my home DSL
account, I wouldn't have much success - I would run out of bandwidth
long before they did. Which is why an attacker typically relies on a
network of compromised machines to do the attacking for them.

And if I were to inform someone that their machine was compromised and
was being used as a source of DoS attacks, I would expect them to try
and do something about it. But that's what a PuSH hub is in many ways
- the equivalent of a high-bandwidth, compromised machine. Yet you
don't seem to think that's a problem.

> Lawsuits are not going to make denial of service attacks go away

That's because the source of the attack is usually distributed across
a large number of compromised machines who are themselves victims - in
such a case a lawsuit isn't feasible. However, when the source is
easily identifiable as coming from one or two high-bandwidth hubs
belonging to a company with a lot of money, the idea of a lawsuit
starts to look like a reasonable way to recover damages.

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