Daily Archives: October 21, 2003

Hosting Matters DOS Attack Continues

This entry was posted in Blogging on by

As many of you are aware sites hosted at Hosting Matters have been victimized by a massive denial of service attack targeted at one specific site: Internet Haganah.
Even though HM has been deligently working with their network providers to resolve this there have been several outages including one this morning which begain shortly after 9:00 AM and has extended to 3:08 PM this afternoon.
Note: this is not something I blame HM for in any way. I work at an institution that has had specific users targeted by denial of service attacks and they can be brutal and massive.
On the other hand, I am somewhat surprised that HM’s upstream networks have failed to successfully block this traffic before it hit’s HM’s circuits. In cases where a single IP is targeted (which we are told is the case here) dropping traffic to this IP by the upstream provider(s) should always work so something is broken here.

Bad MATRIX

This entry was posted in Constitution Culture Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Law Law Enforcement Patriot Act War on Terrorism on by

Some of you may have thought I was being a bit paranoid in my earlier post Canadian Big Brother. Especially since congress cut off funding for Total Information Awareness.
But ashcroft’s Justice Department figures to hell with congress. If we can’t get TIA we’ll go for MATRIX or in normal speak: Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. Justice and Homeland Security are providing funding for what started out as a state based system in Florida:

The U.S. Justice Department recently provided $4 million and the Department of Homeland Security has pledged another $8 million to expand the MATRIX program nationally. Homeland Security will also provide the computer network for information-sharing among the states.

Still not bothered? Try this:

Phil Ramer, special agent in charge of Florida�s statewide intelligence told a Washington Post reporter in early August that the system could be intrusive and pledged to use it with restraint. “It’s scary. It could be abused. I mean, I can call up everything about you, your pictures and pictures of your neighbors.”

Whew, I feel quite comforted by Phil’s promise to use the system with restraint. But what about Ralph or Mary tomorrow?
Why not link in the Canadian’s Bar Watch info, or, you take your pick of the information source. If Matrix, TIA or other similar systems stay in place their operators will figure out a way to include that information.
Yep, use cash. Start becoming as invisible as you can.