Just for general information, RE: a couple of winger sites.:

[MineralMan]

Free Republic has been down off and on both yesterday and today. RimJob says there's a DOS attack, but that's iffy. It's probably just his lousy software screwing up again.

I wouldn't mention it, actually, but another site, Liberty Post is also down, and down hard. It's a racist, reactionary site made up most of people kicked off Free Republic for being even too reactionary for that site. Liberty Post claims a hardware failure.

Now, it's just possible that someone is doing a DOS attack. Another possibility is that an alphabet agency is mining the sites' databases for information. The owners of neither site would ever admit that they were opening their databases to the government, so these outages may be something other than just accidental.

That, and the news that the feds are looking into lone wolves, seems to possibly add up to something.

[XemaSab]

1. Interesting

n/t

[negativenihil]

2. Is it possible...

that the right have finally pissed off the wrong group of liberals/progressives/democrats/whatever you like to call 'em?

personally, i've reached my breaking limit. no more nice guy, no more debate. the right wing needs to sit down, shut up, and let the winners run the show.

[MineralMan]

4. DOS attacks are a lot of work, and I don't see it happening.

I don't know of any organized group capable of pulling one off that cares one way or another about either site. They have much, much bigger fish to fry.

That's why I'm thinking it's something more ordinary. Who knows? Could be a coincidence, but I just don't know.

In the meanwhile, even more noxious sites are still up, so I may be all wet.

[negativenihil]

10. These days...

if you know the right people, you can easily pay for time on an established botnet with many thousands of zombie systems tied to it. The botnet providers have no stake in either side - that wouldn't be good buisness.

It's nothing like it was 10 years ago. DDoS is cheap and easy.

[mkultra]

3. these days, you cant really do a Denial of Service without using a botnet

[MineralMan]

Correct, which is why I'm looking for other possible causes.

It still could be the lousy software over there. It's happened before...several times. However, one of those times was when Tony Snow got disappeared from FR. The site went down in the same way. When it came back up, Snow's hundreds of posts were simply gone and the thread message numbers had all been re-indexed.

I guess Bushco didn't want any record of Snow being active there.

[SpiralHawk]

16. Wow - didn't know about the occult Freeper Snowjob

Republicons really are into hiding their skanky stuff...

[BlooInBloo]

7. Bullshit. Sites get Atrios-ed all the time.

[mkultra]

13. im afraid you got me. Atrios-ed?

If this is a person who got hit, then he was either on his own equipment, or someone leveraged a botnet.

[BlooInBloo]

14. When Atrios links to something, it's very common for the site to go down within 30 minutes....

http://www.eschatonblog.com/

The only difference between that and a DOS is intent, which is not relevant here.


EDIT: Example of grammatical usage: http://www.haloscan.com/comments/atrios/117069917223994787/#9323516

[mkultra]

18. i see, thats something different, there is a big difference

When people get link dropped, its because they are paying for too little bandwidth and when some little site gets suddenly popular, they usually exceed their quota for the month and their provider shuts them off.

Most serious sites don't have a bandwidth quota and so this doesn't really apply.

If your thinking of a the type of DOS attack in which you chew up thier bandwidth, this requires a botnet or you must have a bigger pipe then them. Even so, this is the weakest form of DOS attack, as it stops once you stop.

The best way to drop someone is to find an SQL injection error and pummel it until thier database drops or teardrop thier server into collapse.

[BlooInBloo]

5. With all of the eliminationist rhetoric, I wouldn't be surprised if the media and the FBI...

were scouring those sites more.

[lpbk2713]

6. As crude as it is Freepworld is too technical for them to maintain.

They simply don't have any idea what they are dealing with and what it requires to make it work.

Typical rethuglicans.

[MineralMan]

8. That's true, too. I'm sure the code for that site looks like a bucket of

spaghetti by now. I'm surprised the database queries work at all any more, given all the kludgy changes made over the years.

[orleans]

9. well, thanks for checking for us so we don't have to. n/t

[theothersnippywshrub]

11. I believe that RimJob has a policy of shutting it down when fund raising slows down. n/t

[MineralMan]

12. There is that, too. It's the coincidence between the two related

sites that got my interest.

[MineralMan]

15. This just in. It wasn't a DOS attack. It was a CP/M attack

generated by a bunch of old guys with Kaypro computers.

[Stephanie]

17. Interesting, thanks.

The Freeps must be in High Paranioa, with good reason. I read some gun threads there last night and they were advising each other to conceal carry, not open carry.