On 01/02/2008, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 31, 2008 6:39 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Is there anything that can or should be done ahead of time, at the site operations level or developer level, to try and keep the presumed end-case massive DOS attack on the systems from succeeding?
DOS attempts against the site are frequent but because the normal traffic load is so high they are almost always insignificant. When they are detected at all it is usually by complete accident, and not because they had any real effect. Not that the someone couldn't do it... just that the fact that someone is trying is uninteresting. The really serious DOS attacks tend to show up in places where there is a profit motive, ... which there wouldn't be against Wikimedia. Generally we're better off denying the attention of making noise about their feeble attempts. ;)
It would be a useful thing to have handy, because there are a lot of Mediawiki users who haven't got a network like the Foundation's to protect them.
- d.