Wikileaks moves to Amazon's cloud to evade massive DDoS

[steve2470]

http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/11/wikileaks-moves-to-amazons-cloud-to-evade-massive-ddos.ars

Controversial information disclosure site Wikileaks reportedly faced an intense distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack this morning. The site was temporarily disrupted by the onslaught, but is functioning again after migrating its services to Amazon's cloud.

Wikileaks recently published thousands of confidential diplomatic cables that were sent between the US State Department and embassies around the world. The leaked documents shed light on US intelligence gathering efforts and reveal sensitive information pertaining to US foreign relations. The disclosure of the cables has proved embarrassing for the US and a number of other governments.

It's possible that the DDoS against Wikileaks was orchestrated by a government in effort to retaliate against the leak and disrupt access to the documents. Prominent figures in the US government, including a congressman, are calling for an extreme response to the leak, arguing that Wikileaks should be treated as a terrorist organization. The group is clearly facing considerable pressure and close scrutiny as a result of the leak.

Wikileaks says that the DDoS was pummeling its servers at 10 gigabits per second, forcing its Swedish hosting provider to discontinue operation of the site. In order to continue operating smoothly, Wikileaks moved its site to Amazon's elastic cloud computing infrastructure. This will allow it to scale better in the face of massive DDoS attacks.

[mike_c]

1. the truth wants out....

[Raster]

2. And I wonder where those DDoS attacks are coming from?

Maybe the acres of NSA computers? 10 gigabits a second?

[HipChick]

5. Sudden increase in traffic?

He's only been hanging the carrot out forever

[HipChick]

6. China...Bots farms

[Whisp]

3. can someone give me a explanation of cloud computing 101?

[steve2470]

4. a start anyway....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

[Whisp]

9. I did try that earlier

but wiki to me is just unreadable. all those links just make me crazy and I get sent off to 'how to make pie crust' or something.

[steve2470]

10. overly simplistic explanation....

Cloud computing is the utility of computers: you hook up to it (like the phone system or the power grid), you pay so much per hour or per job, and you get to use dozens/hundreds/thousands of computers (called servers) all working on your problem.

Does that help ?

[jberryhill]

7. A brief video explanation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3F4GmbHl5g

[Whisp]

8. lol! Hey McCloud, Get Offa my Ewe!

[Toucano]

11. This is very confusing. Is it lazy journalism?

"...recently published thousands of diplomatic cables..."

I only see 291 documents at the moment. Thousands of documents have not been published yet, but the media actually has them, no?

Why, then, attack the wikileaks site?

[MattSh]

12. Because they can?

Because they want to send a message?

Because they want to know what works the next time a leak comes out?