On Jan 31, 2008 6:39 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
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?
[snip]
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. ;)
On the other hand, killing more obviously rubbish edits serves
purposes beyond DOS avoidance.