Another DDOS Strike on CastleCops

CastleCops, a security watchdog site, is under another DDOS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attack, as per the report published on March 28, 2008 by darkREADING.

In a DDOS attack, a group of compromised systems attacks a single system, resulting denying service to the users of the affected system. The targeted system shuts down due to the large number of incoming messages and resulting in denial of services to the users, as per the Internet security experts.

An anti-spam and anti-malware site CastleCops, which is operated by volunteers, has been facing threat from botnet traffic since March 26, 2008, says the report.

According to the news published on March 28, 2008 by darkREADING, the CastleCops Founder and Administrator, Paul Laudanski, said that usually, the DDOS attacks involve HTTP GET but this time it seems that it includes a POST.

Paul Laudanski further added that after observing performance problem in the site, he was the first person to notice the DDOS attack on March 26, 2008. Initially, he noticed rise in load on the server and a pattern in the logs of the server which indicated an attack on the Website.

DDOS attack has not completely disabled the Website but the users are facing a problem in connectivity. It also seems that some new botnets have attacked the site, says Laudanski.

Moreover, in the second week of March, Gala Coral, a gambling site, was also attacked by the use of botnets and as a result, it remained shut down and denied services to its users for about thirty minutes, says the report.

Mostly the anti-cybercrime Websites such as CastleCops and Spamhaus are targeted by the disgruntled people as these sites help in investigating phishing and malware attacks. Moreover, these Websites have partnerships with law enforcement bodies and researchers.

According to the Internet security experts, to reduce DDOS attacks, CastleCops site is trying to clear the traffic based on attack fingerprint. It is also posting the erratic IP addresses which have been corrupting the site.

However, CastleCops has faced DDOS attacks many a times in past also. For instance, it was attacked in February as well as in August 2007.

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» SPAMfighter News - 4/9/2008