Is there a plan to DoS defacement sites off the Internet?

Stopping s'kiddies getting any publicity

By John Leyden, 20th September 2001

Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything

Is there a co-ordinated attempt taking place to force defacement archives off the Internet?

After Safemode.org told us that a distributed denial of service attack against it had caused its ISP to drop it, the question needs to be asked.

The attack against Safemode.org, as described to us by its admin and co-founder Mystakill, occurred at the same time as attacks against Alldas.de, which also resulted in that site becoming unavailable. There are some subtle differences in the mode of attack though.

Mystakill told us that Safemode.org had become the victim of a "land" (or indirect) attack.

"The attackers send a DDoS spoofing our IP address as the source to many Web sites, he said. "The victims of the DDoS then respond to us or our ISP [BullsEyeTelco] about the problem.

"Our ISP or the up stream provider contacts us about our server being the aggressor of these attacks and demanded that the server be taken offline."

Most security related Web sites are subject to attack by s'kiddies but the suspicion is that Safemode.org and Alldas.de were targeted by people who (for whatever reason) wanted to see defacement archives taken off the Internet.

Defacement archives provide a valuable resource for the security community though they can be a difficult tenant for ISPs who have to cope with flames about port scanning, high bandwidth demands as well as the occasional DoS attack. It's also a hassle to those running the sites, which is one of the main reasons Attrition.org decided to drop its defacement archive earlier this year.

So, as it stands, both Safemode.org and Alldas.de are looking for an ISP to take them on. Neither is optimistic about getting back online anytime soon, if ever.

Who gains from this?

S'kiddies must be pleased their work is recorded on the Web for all to see, so we don't consider them as the likely perps. It makes far more sense that government and big business would prefer that these mirror sites "go away" so that the exploits of hackers are not exhibited or glorified.

Mystakill was quite willing to believe this theory.

"I would not put that past the US government," he said.

"We have hundreds of .gov and .mil sites mirrored, if you where a big security company or entire government would you want you blunders archived for all time?"

Quite. ®