08.11.09
How the Attacks on Sites Like Twitter Can Help Promote Free Software
Analysis: If anything good came out of the deluge of DDoS attacks, it is increased awareness of Free software benefits
PREVIOUS posts about the Twitter DDoS attack [1, 2, 3, 4] were used as a representative sample of the ongoing problems caused by Windows zombies. Following a modest proposal from SJVN, there are more realistic measures put forth, which may or may not tackle the problem at hand. To quote a portion:
After last week’s near-collapse of the social networks, such as Twitter, due to a Windows-based, botnet DDoS attack, I made a modest proposal: Throw Windows off the Internet. Here’s how we can do it. Or, at the very least, force Windows users to maintain basic security standards.
Is the problem really so bad that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) must start encouraging users to abandon Windows or enforce Windows security? I think so.
Think about it. Besides last week’s attack, in early July many South Korean and American government and business sites were knocked out, In May, it was Google’s turn to be battered. Massive attacks that knock out part of the Internet are becoming commonplace. Since Windows-based botnets, are what’s strangling the Internet, I don’t see that we have any choice but to start, at the least, regulating the use of Windows.
Ideally, everyone would just switch to a desktop Linux or a Mac. Yeah, like that’s going to happen.
TechDirt correctly points out that the person whom the attackers tried to silence is only receiving more attention right now. So the attacks had an adverse effect. The Georgian blogger is now the centre of attention.
Georgian blogger calls for Twitter attack probe
[...]
The pro-Georgian blogger who was the target of attacks that shut down micro-blogging website Twitter last week has called on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to track down the culprits.
One gainer from this attack may be Free software. As Wired Magazine has just put it, “Open Source ‘Twitter’ Could Fend Off the Next Twitpocalypse.”
Last week’s denial-of-service attack that knocked Twitter offline was aimed at one man — a blogger in the former Soviet republic of Georgia called Cyxymu. Nonetheless, it caused the entire Twitter universe to blink out of existence for hours. This struck some detractors of the service as hilarious (how do “these people” complain about Twitter being down if Twitter is down?). But the truth of the matter is that Twitter is an increasingly important lubricant for greasing the wheels of the web.
[...]
Prodromou, who built Laconi.ca and Identi.ca, estimates that thousands of companies already use Laconi.ca to set up private, company-wide Twitter-like networks, and that hundreds of public sites like the ones mentioned above use it too. His own Laconi.ca implementation, Indenti.ca, has nearly 80,000 users so far and is growing at a thousand users per day.
What’s also interesting is perhaps the observation that around the time of these attacks some of the most senior people at the DHS (see notes at [1, 2, 3, 4]) are quitting their job. Have they just given up?
Yet another high-ranking government official in charge of securing the country’s computer networks has resigned. This time, it’s the head of the US Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team.
[...]
Kwon’s departure announcement follows that of Melissa E. Hathaway, the White House interim top aide for cybersecurity, who last week also submitted a letter of resignation following delays by the Obama administration in appointing a permanent director to oversee the safety of the nation’s vital computer networks. Insiders had expected the position to be filled months ago.
Even the FBI is struggling with security, due to Windows. █
twitter said,
August 11, 2009 at 9:20 am
It is strange that people treat this as an outlandish idea, as if M$’s monopoly were based on merit when the author knows better. Every major PC maker has been selling GNU/Linux computers for years and they’ve all done well with them. Massive and expensive management of retail, OEM, education and government and perception are required to maintain the M$ monopoly but Vista really was the end of them. We all know it. Even Dvorak uses GNU/Linux now. I’ve been using GNU/Linux exclusively at home for the last eight years or so. My whole family uses it, starting at age 3. There’s not much we miss out on besides problems. Mine is a nearly universal experience. People in the tech press need to quit pretending GNU/Linux is something rare, strange, difficult or otherwise outlandish.
It is, indeed time to put the full burden of Windows use on it’s users. There’s no need for new complicated and expensive scanning of Windows machines. All ISPs already know which of their clients are infected, and have booted them in the past. They need to do this again. A problem is that ISPs like Cox and Comcast have shown bad faith towards P2P and other forms of sharing. Regulators will have to be watchful to make sure that booting infected machine programs are not abused this way. M$ and Windows users have all smugly pushed IE and the Windows only web on the world. It is only fitting that they be banished based on obvious harm. This kind of booting could not have happened to a nicer company.
Charles Oliver said,
August 11, 2009 at 9:35 am
I used to enjoy sjvn’s postings but I must admit they do seem to be getting more rabid. I think he does it because he likes to set a storm going in his comments. Fair enough, each to his own, but the reason the Internet has grown is because anyone can join in. If you start adding arbitrary restrictions before you are allowed to connect you lose the basis of what makes it great.
The reason spam is continually sent is that enough people respond to the spam to make it worthwhile. The reason botnets exist is that enough people click on the link that downloads the dodgy file to make it worthwhile.
GNU/Linux is a great operating system but I somehow doubt that it is user proof. Look at the way Ubuntu uses sudo. All a malware author needs to do is a bit of social engineering on the user to get them to execute the file, add a user cron job to see if sudo has been used recently and wait to install with super user privileges. With regular updates, the wait shouldn’t be too long. They could simply roll a deb or rpm with added malware for a coveted piece of software that is not available in the OS repositories. They could target a mirror, or even the main repository for an OS.
The advantage most GNU/Linux distros have over Windows is that updates update the whole system and little software is proprietary, so you are unlikely to have an unpatched publicly know exploit sitting around for long.
Windows proponents, at least in the sjvn comments, often seem to point to the number of security holes fixed in open source software as a measure that the software is flakey. It still surprises me that they do this: a bug is found in firefox, bam a security fix is out and 24-48 hours later all the distros have it; a bug is found in IE, bam 8 months later it gets a patch maybe. Collecting together bug fixes and not publishing the details of all of them is not a measure of a more secure system.
Anyway, back at the point. Apache has two modes of operation, threaded and child processes. The threaded model seems a little more limited and thus things like php have required the child process approach (if this is no longer the case I’d like to know). This makes it somewhat easier for an attacker to bring down a system with a DOS attack. Maybe we should be looking at apache and asking what can be done to improve it’s resilience against DOS attacks. I have no doubt that this is already being done (this is open source software after all) and we can probably all list some of the available counter-measures.