Tech: DoS attacks

Most people reading this are probably familiar with "denial of service" attacks, where a computer or server is intentionally attacked in order to deny service to its users. In my case, it's my favorite web forum, The High Road, that is the target. THR's been down for many days now, and it's only through the hard work and money of stalwart server operators that there's even hope that it's going to be back up again at all.

In the most common attack, a server is flooded with external commuication. The very nature of the Internet means that these packets can literally come from anywhere (so-called "distributed" DoS attacks, which can consist of thousands of compromised computers being controlled by one attacker). Massive bandwidth either forces users to access the server at a crawl, or crash the system completely.

You may ask why servers just can't ignore traffic like this. The answers are complicated, and some of the reasons that DoS attacks work have to do with the nature of the Internet itself. Most extraordinary are attacks against the Internet itself - the famous DNS backbone attacks. These backbones are so important that the U.S. government is prepared to bomb attacking countries in real life to prevent the Internet from going down.

All of this is fascinating, of course, but I can't help but think some maladjusted runt is behind the attacks on THR. I hope THR comes back eventually - for now, we have to settle for The Firing Line.