Security Incidents mailing list archives

Re: DOS ATTACK


From: "Kurt Seifried" <bt () seifried org>
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 14:40:13 -0800

Hi mr police, some guy in your country, we think, attacked our server and
brought it down. Well no, nothing was stolen. No, we spent less then $10,000
fixing it. Well no, no he didn't actually break into the system... no.. we
can prove that he came from a box we think is in your country, but to be
honest that box was probably broken into from another site... yeah, we'd
like you to spend several thousand dollars tracking this down. *click*.
hello? hello?

Uh yeah, that about sums it up I think. It simply costs to much to build a
case against someone that does htis, let alone succesfully prosecute it. The
cost of finding the person, getting enough probable cause for a search
warrant, executing said search warrant against the attackers home system,
etc, to find enough evidence that they did it is unlikely. Plus there are
plenty of potential defenses "I was simply used as a relay, they broke into
my system too!" etc.

Let's be realistic, if we gave away brick throwing devices that could launch
a brick through a window up to 10,000 miles away, how often do you think the
police would catch people breaking windows with bricks?

Kurt Seifried, kurt () seifried org
A15B BEE5 B391 B9AD B0EF
AEB0 AD63 0B4E AD56 E574
http://seifried.org/security/


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