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The board is a bit like a mogul today...

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
In that I mean it is up and down all over the place.
I couldn't get into it before lunch at all and it's running a bit slow ever since.
I think U needs to feed the hamsters a bit more. Laughing
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
I believe this is a result of a "Denial of Service" (DoS) attack, directed at another user on the same server...
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Confused
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
Ian Hopkinson, would you like to explain what that means......or are you just "quoting" Wink
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
At the risk of people more experienced than I pointing and laughing at me, here is my understanding of a DoS:

Bad people send lots of malformed requests for webpages to our server, our server looks at them but can't make any sense of them - in the meantime our proper requests for webpages get ignored, or at least badly delayed.

Very bad people will use a bunch of computers they have control of through, for example, a virus to make the DoS worse by increasing the number of requests. I believe it is this sort of attack which has brought www.microsoft.com to its knees on odd occasions (actually this isn't quite right - microsoft knew it was going to happen and moved house for a few days!).

I believe there is a hardware fix, in that you can install a relatively dumb bit of hardware between the internet and you which looks at the requests and only sends proper ones on to the server.
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Aaaaaaghhhh. Ian's made the 666 (posts) Evil or Very Mad
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Twisted Evil hahahahahahahahaha...ha!
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
We just had the 11111th post a minute or too ago as well Skullie
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
It means some low life is targetting their attack at someone else who has their site on the same server, imagine the server is an office block with each floor rented out to a different company (or website) unfortunately all the visitors to the office block go in and out of the lifts, a denial of service attack works by bombarding the website with a lot of posts or in our office analogy a lot of visitors, if loads of visitors are all going to one floor they use all the lifts and make it harder for visitors to the other floors to get where they want to go.

Thats my understanding of it anyway in slightly easier to understand terms
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 Ski the Net with snowHeads
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It is a little frustrating I agree.
All the more so because we paid for a resources upgrade just before this DoS thing began.

Two weeks ago snowHeads was getting sluggish with 20-25 concurrent users
I noticed earlier, we had 33 users online line at once and pages were still being returned at full speed - suddenly no access for 15 mins! Bah!

Unfortunately even though the DoS attack isn't even directed at us, there's not a lot we can do for now - our host is installing some very expensive hardware to better deal with such things so it should be only a temporary inconvenience.
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 snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
Analogies abound today.
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
A DoS attack is a bunch of boarders sitting down on the middle of the slope, just over the brow of a hill that the responsible snowsport user was heading towards. He can't get past them without slowing down and moving over to the side.
What they are installing is an anti-snowboarder policy, a bit like Alta, or some of the other excellent resorts in the world. When that is done, then the boarders won't be able to gather together and cause a problem, even though the odd one may still try to sit down.
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 So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
I'm having sporadic problems with a lot of sites today - so maybe there's a surge in this kind of problem at the moment.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Wear The Fox Hat, Laughing
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
DG - ever thought about becoming a teacher?! Me learn lots here at snowheads.
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
It's not the SCGB/KGB then? Madeye-Smiley
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Dave Burt, I do occasionally teach (3D computer graphics and CAD) but you wouldn't want to have to pay the ammounts I charge per day usually works out to about £350 or more and an introductory course is about 3 days Cool Unfortunately for my expensive skiing habit I don't do enough work to ski for as long as I'd like Crying or Very sad
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Denial of service - just like having to wait for a ski lift whilst hoards of ESF ski classes get to skip in front of you Exclamation
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 You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
Situation pretty much the same early this morning... I was up and around at 6am French time, so 5am civilised time... wouldn't have thought there was much DOS activity around then? ... but what do I know (not a lot!).
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
PG, I hear they have different time in other countries. Also, apparently the bad guys have computers now to perform their insidious deeds even while they sleep.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
el Hen, I was thinking more of the US - when they're asleep over there things tend to speed up generally. But perhaps I was up too early for that....
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Do you know which site is actually being attacked?
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
This was how it began:
our server host wrote:
Sorry for not responding individually to the many requests we received
but I hope this will explain it. Between 1830-1930 a customer running
an IRC server attracted a denial-of-service attack which caused our
internal router to effectively fail, dropping 95% of packets. Peter
restored connectvitity to the network at 1930 with some swift
reconfiguration; this would have been quicker but he had to dash back
from a restaurant first!

We're currently investing in a £15,000 border router to fend off such
attacks more quickly in future, and our apologies for this outage.
While malicious damage to networks is becoming commonplace, we are now
becoming less and less surprised at the methods being used, and more
conservative in our network management policies.


Further we've been informed that the machine we are running on as virtual server has a very high load atm and will be upgraded on friday.

U
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
admin wrote:
This was how it began:
our server host wrote:

We're currently investing in a £15,000 border router to fend off such
attacks more quickly in future, and our apologies for this outage.
While malicious damage to networks is becoming commonplace.


U


Ahh Ha so it is Borders who are to blame Razz Laughing
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Ski the Net with snowHeads
D G Orf, aagghhh, you beat me to it Laughing
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 snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
Me too, had message written, pressed send and it all went dark again - Damned Darksiders.
£15,000 - hope it's BMW sized

I'm not compaining you understand - just find it frustrating. rolling eyes
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
If these people are trying to attack free speech, then they might find they regret the alternative.
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 So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
David Goldsmith wrote:
If these people are trying to attack free speech, then they might find they regret the alternative.

Where did that come from Shocked

How does a spotty 17 year old writing a virus in his bedroom equate to attack free speech. It's just teenagers being teenagers - morally inept slimey little bugs with no girlfriends and no hope of them but still just teenagers being teenagers 99% of the time.

Not that I'm attacking you david you understand Toofy Grin
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Unfortunately a lot of the serious virus writers out there are a lot older than 17 years old, they write viruses for different reasons, fun, politics, blackmail or corparate destruction are all used as justification, only a tiny minority of 17 year olds would have the talent to write a really destructive virus. And David is correct some do indeed try to claim it's to do with free speech, of course that argument fails as soon as you realise that what they are destroying is other people write to free speach Confused
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Fair enough - still blame the teenagers myself though Evil or Very Mad
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
This is good on them there hackers:

"now your ego is larger then your IQ , you know how to root a server ,
you know how to D.o.S anyone on IRC ,
you are confident ,
you are clueless ,
you think you are a god ,
you have younger want to be script kiddys worshiping you ,
you are in the pinacle of your script kiddy life...

you are now a Script Kiddy .. enjoy your new life of stupidity...

in about a year you will realize that being a script kiddy is nothing but a waste of time.. and sure you have learnt your way around linux like a small town with only once street to pick up hookers , but you still have a long way to go before you are corprate material.. and once you decide computers are your dream and thats what you want to do for the rest of your life you notice that you wasted the last year and a half being a script kiddy .. inflating your teen ego .. hurting lil web servers for no reason other than the thrill of the hack.. heh "

http://baza.source.gr/article.php3?sid=20010118145934
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Sad and worrying,

"....* general idea *
Cause as much trouble with the tools you have as posible figure out what each tool does and how / why it works overall have fun with people and concider yourself better than them because you can use teardrop.c to freeze their windows computer or ADMmountd.c to break into their elite red hat 5.1 box....."

It's an ego trip for sad 'n little people. I'd like to meet the one who wrote the virus we caught last week, so I can beat the £1,500 out of him that it cost us to straighten our system out.
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
1500 quid! My god! We use Atomwide/Message Labs to filter out all the nasties before they get to us - at a few quid a month per user, your experience makes it look a bargain!
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 You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
David Steven, we're usually pretty watertight with a good firewall and virus shield, but the shield engine was due an upgrade (we do it once a month or so) and a "new" one slipped in.

The really annoying thing was that my cheap 'n cheerful system at home spotted it and zapped it straight away.

Apart from the actual cost, which you can see, there's also the down time while you disinfect that is a pain.
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
You probably don't want to hear this and know it already, but you should update your virus shield and Firewall at least once a week not once a month.

Please don't think that I am digging it in, I'm not. I know of someone, though not exactly who at this moment who has one of the Netsky viruses, as a friend of mine asked me whether I had sent him an email with an attachment to it. Thankfully he did not open the attachment.

I replied that I had not and I did check my system though it is clear. This virus ghost the who it is from email address.

Of course nothing is ever full proof.

Weird though, I have not had any emails come to me with this virus!!!
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Annehillskiing, thats the bug! Netsky.

We do update the gubbins nearly daily, but this was yer actual engine that needed upgrading (I'm told).

Stop me if I'm getting technical. Madeye-Smiley
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Oi!


Where's my "...ger" gone.


I'm sure I put it in that last post! Twisted Evil
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
Unfortunately the word censor is a bit overzealous at times, if your really must say bug-ger then hyphenation is the way to go, mummy's little sweetie!
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 You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
I'm sorry to hear it was that little nasty, it has been doing the rounds in various forms for a while!! Mad
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 Ski the Net with snowHeads
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Surely if that little bug-ger gets in here, it should be re-named Netski Exclamation
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