DDoSing Over Coffee

I’m on the move, venturing outside the bounds of the M25 for the first time since SteemFest 3. I’m going by train, which I love at off-peak times, but first, coffee.

I’m at Costa, @sergiomendes’ favourite coffee house. I can see why, the coffee isn’t that bad at all. I only drink Americanos anyway, so the taste doesn’t change that much from shop to shop, unless I’m on mainland Europe or Africa.

I decided to try using Busy.org this morning - but alas!

It made me wonder if we’d brought this upon ourselves. I noticed quite a lot of noise on Twitter about how the Steem blockchain is decentralised and thus ”can’t be brought down”. While that’s very true, the frontends like Steemit.com and Busy.org can most definitely by brought down quite easily.

A DDoS attack that can bring a giant organisation like Facebook to its knees would have us for breakfast. Yes, Facebook is centralised, but they do have thousands of servers distributed globally. I can imagine probably only Google and Amazon have more servers than they do. They probably have some single (or few) points of failure to which the DDoS traffic can be directed - which is why they can be affected.

I think many people also underestimate the power of a well coordinated DDoS attack, especially by a well funded or a state level organisation. They have recruited millions of computers around the world that are sitting, waiting to take part in such an attack once called upon.

A DDoS attack is also cheaper to implement than to defend against. Why? Because they are decentralised! Hahahaha, the irony eh? Yes there’s a central command (the attacker), but the participating bots are usually distributed globally.

So where are these ‘computers’ and ‘bots’? Well, one of them is probably sitting on your desk right now. You may even be holding one in your hand as you read this. A good portion of our computer devices have been compromised by one botnet or the other, laying dormant, waiting to attack.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory or anything mystical - it’s just the reality of having so many of these computerised devices with internet connections. In theory, apart from your desktop computer, your smartphone, TV, IP security camera, baby monitor, e.t.c, may all be participating in the ongoing DDoS attacks!

I think it’s important to say this though: The Steem Blockchain is not down, neither is it affected by the DDoS attacks. Web frontends like Steemit and Busy have been having difficulty however, since they’re merely websites like any other. I’m not even sure the problems being experienced with Busy has anything to do with DDoS since I can actually access the page and read posts. I just can’t log in or interact with the posts. I have no idea what the issue is actually, since Busy never communicates with us anymore.

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Peace and Love ✌🏿
Adé

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