I have posted the following comment before, appols for not having time right now to write something more substantial, following my comment is one that was written by someone following a post my me to the global IMC Tech list (which is still down, the same as all IMC lists :-(

The electrohippies site proposes that people join in a DDoS, if you don't know what a Distributed Denial of Service attack is then try reading some results of this Google:

 http://www.google.com/search?q=DDoS

I think a DDoS is like spam, always bad.

There have been heated debates about this, if you want to read more then this post on Kuro5hin.org and the following debate is worth spending some time reading:

Netstrikes & Antiglobalization Protesters
Feb 3rd, 2002
 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/2/1/18841/51351

Has there been a debate on any IMC lists about this? It's a shame the list server is down.

This is a reply to an email from me:

On Wed, Mar 26, 2003 at 11:14:41AM +0000, Chris Croome wrote:
> I have posted a comment that I think DDoS is like spam -- this list has
> discussed activist spam and (rightly IMHO) decided that activist spam is
> still spam -- what about DDoS attacks?
>
> Is this the right list to discuss this on? (I posted this here since (a)
> I'm on this list and (b) people here will know what it's like to be at
> the wrong end of a DDoS...)

In a way, yes, a DoS attack is like spam... but it's much more than
that.

The Internet is the largest socialist entity the world knows right now.
Yes, you have to pay to get into it, but once in your traffic can flow
freely without having to pay the hundreds, or in some cases thousands,
of hosts inbetween for routing your traffic over their networks. With a
few exceptions, where people are metered for their usage and charged per
gigabyte, net users pay for a certain "pipe". That may be a modem
dialup, a cable line, a T3, or whatever. Everyone does this. That pipe
can carry a certain amount of bandwidth across it, wether limited by
technical specifications (ie, 56k modem) or by ISP limitations (you can
only upload 128kbps on most cable systems). But whatever you throw
through that pipe can go anywhere, anytime, without paying for it.


So people get upset at someone. It may be citygroup, it may be
Microsoft, it may be Indymedia... whoever it is, they hack into other
people's computers or trick them into installing trojan software, and
use a network of compromised machines without even their owners knowing
about it to flood a specific host with traffic, thus overwhelming their
pipe. If the pipe gets too full, no other traffic can get through.
Hence why its called a Denial of Service attack.

But the victim isn't the only one harmed. In fact, far from it. This
is because that flood is routed over the public Internet, over dozens of
networks and hundreds of links, all of which are routing traffic which
has the purpose only to attack another host. The Internet becomes more
congested, real traffic goes slower, everyone suffers.

The electrohippies say this is just like civil disobedience, like
blocking off a street to protest a company, but only moreso because the
corporation make a shitload of money from their website every minute...
and thus looses a shitload of money every minute. But this isn't a
one-time thing, this isnt a once in a month against one host thing.
This is happening every minute of every day, multiple hosts (including
Indymedia) are being attacked because someone doesnt agree with whats on
the site or doesn't like the organization behind it. To shut down even
a street takes the collective will of thousands, whereas one kid in his
bedroom can take down a major website - in fact, this happens more often
than most people know about. A good amount of the problems with the
Internet are caused by DoS attacks, it's a problem for everyone.

Let us not forget that the Internet is not the militarized zones like
city streets are. There are no police in riot gear, only geeks sitting
in network operations centers staying awake on coffee trying to block
the attack. It's a cowards game, there's little chance of arrest,
almost no chance of being harmed or being exposed to pain causing
agents, and rarely does the public ever hear about it. This is possible
because the Internet was designed as a free entity, trusting in the
honesty of everyone that used it.

Some people would like to change this. They want to militarize the
Internet, restrict not only the information accessable on it but also
who can access it. The chinese have already done so. It's a threat to
a non-free society, because the Internet in it's current state promotes
freedom. They use things such as DoS attacks and Spam to promote
changing it, as the Internet becomes less and less useful change becomes
nessesary for it to continue to exist, more centralisation, more control.

Groups like the electrohippies are blind cowards.. blind because they
dont see the scope of effects caused by their actions, and cowards
because they're too afraid to get out in the streets and make real change.

Really we could debate this till the cows come home, just like some people debate the whole fluffy-vs-spikey thing. It's a matter of personal choice, just like some people choose to sit in the road or send parcels of dog poo to Presidente Blair while others throw bricks through Army recuitment center windows or cause major damage to fighter planes.
What ever you do, make sure you are aware of the possible consequences of your actions (both to others and yourself), it just makes sense.

A DoS Attack is just another tool in the box that's all.
(I found it hilarious after coming home from a demo and finding that my computer had helped shut down Number-10's site.)

Chris, in normal circumstances I personally would give your points a lot more validity but these are not normal times and we must do all we can to try and halt the war machine (IMHO).

Say YES to peace!

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your reply. We do know it's a distributed denial of service but we don't think it's a bad idea at all. In fact this action is going to be held only this thrusday, in paralel and as a complement to the massive street protests that have been taking place during the past weeks here in Spain. This massive protests have been brutally repressed by the state.

The same people who at the moment is visiting the sit-in website is the same people who today, yesterday, last weekend, and during the next weeks will take the streets as well in order to show their protests.

We do agree with you that at leat today, internet traffic flow ,at least in Spain, will run slower and probably will cause annoyance to some people (like a general strike does for example), but as we said before this action is a single action taking place today during 24h. It has been properly announced before and when the day finishes the action website will be dismanteled.

cheers.