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Old September 14th, 2007
Nick Storm Nick Storm is offline
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Join Date: July 18th, 2007
Location: AZ
Posts: 41
Nick Storm is flying high
Default Denial of Service Attack?

I was watching my BS server run a few days ago, and noticed that uploads had dropped to zero, when there are normally 10 or 12 going on. I switched over to the Upload page, and saw huge lists of files (20 or more at a time) pop up in red, with the status of "authorizing". All of the "requests" appear to be from the same user (someone using Limewire, if it matters), and all vanish after a moment, then reappear a few seconds later. It kept on doing this until I rebooted BS.

It occurred to me that BS probably has a finite ceiling for the number of simultaneous inquiries it can handle, and if someone slammed it all at once (as in a classic DOS attack), they could clog up the works and prevent legitimate users from being able to get in. I've since noticed this happen several times now, and when it does, UL's drop to nothing. It will keep it up for an hour or so, then stop.

Granted, this might also just be some idiot batching files via Limewire, but the end result is not very pretty. And this is on a fast machine (2.8ghz dual cpu unit w/2 gig of ram). On systems with either a slower machine or a slower connection, it would clog things up quite nicely.

I may have to play with Limewire some to see if I can make it hit a specific address in such a manner.

Cheers

Nick
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