Because Human Nature Often Leads Us To Ignore These Things--

[caras_galadhon]

Hopefully everyone is heeding the little blue banner warning plastered across LJ pages today that says: "There is currently an attack which will attempt to mislead you into providing your username & password to a third party. More detailsPlease do follow the "More details" link, which explains the nature of the attack, and how it manifests itself.

Comments

[chelseagirl]

Hey, do you know of an archive or just good posts/sources on the POS attacks on LJ? I'm doing a course on global censorship in the spring and want to include LJ along with more obvious/popular targets, especially since the attacks are specifically Russia-focused.

[caras_galadhon]

I think I'm being a little dense here, but I'm failing to parse POS correctly. Do you mean DOS, or am I missing the vital first word in what I'm assuming is "[something] of service attack"?

(Which is to say yeah, I think I can rustle up some links, but I want to make sure I'm looking for the right thing for you first.)

[chelseagirl]

Isn't that what people have been calling it? Apparently I'm the dense one as I am not tremendously knowledgeable about internet terms.

[caras_galadhon]

I'm familiar with it as as "Distributed Denial of Service attack," or a "Denial of Service attack"? But that doesn't mean it doesn't go by POS too, mind you. Anyway, either way, the point is to get you sources on what's up. ^_^

I don't have an archive of info on the attacks, but there are numerous news articles about this one (and previous ones), if that works?

- Russian bloggers fume over pre-election cyber attacks - A general overview, plus a quick reference to April's attacks

- Russian voters in the dark as cyber attack hits blog - Information on the importance of the recent vote, and how this relates to LJ being attacked.

- Russia: Election Day DDoS-alypse - Has a timeline of the heaviest part of this most recent attack, including other sites targeted.

- Critical websites hacked, down on election day - Some (unsupported) conjecture on what triggered the attack.

- Kremlin accused of crackdown on Russians' access to western media - Exactly what it sounds like: an article laying the DDoS directly on the Kremlin's doorstep

[chelseagirl]

Oh my god, it looks like I never thanked you for this. I am SO SORRY -- I was so swamped in fall semester that sometimes I set things aside for later and . . .

sorry for being a jerk. This is AMAZING; thank you so much.

Perhaps I can buy you a drink when we are in Florida in March, to thank you? (I'd say lunch, but I'm an adjunct. ;-) )

[caras_galadhon]

Oh, wait, did you mean the phishing attempt I was specifically referring to in the OP? If so, then no, I don't have any substantiated reports that they're politically oriented. There's a good chance they're just the usual scams, but ill timed to seem like part of the larger DDoSes.