Ask Slashdot: How To Deal With a DDoS Attack?

First time accepted submitter TheUnFounded writes "A site that I administer was recently 'held hostage' for the vast sum of $800. We were contacted by a guy (who was, it turns out, in Lebanon), who told us that he had been asked to perform a DDoS on our site by a competitor, and that they were paying him $600. He then said for $800, he would basically go away. Not a vast sum, but we weren't going to pay just because he said he 'could' do something. Within 5 minutes, our site was down. The owner of the company negotiated with the guy, and he stopped his attack after receiving $400. A small price to pay to get the site online in our case. But obviously we want to come up with a solution that'll allow us to deal with these kinds of attacks in the future. While the site was down, I contacted our hosting company, Rackspace. They proceeded to tell me that they have 'DDoS mitigation services,' but they cost $6,000 if your site is under attack at the time you use the service. Once the attack was over, the price dropped to $1500. (Nice touch there Rackspace, so much for Fanatical support; price gouging at its worst). So, obviously, I'm looking for alternative solutions for DDoS mitigation. I'm considering CloudFlare as an option; does anyone have any other suggestions or thoughts on the matter?"

This May Work

[arthurpaliden]

I don't know who you are. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my computerr go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

You can't win.

[AK Marc]

There was a gambling site in Australia that got on the wrong side of a gambling gang (stealing customers, nothing they did specifically to attract ire). The DDoS took down Australia. Keeping your servers up when your link is flooded isn't too hard. Keeping your site up when the DDoS takes down your ISP and their ISP is a little harder. The "best" solution is to log all IPs and sue all local IPs for hacking. Get some old lady fined $1,000,000 for hacking and maybe people will figure out that they should secure it or turn it off. If there were no botnets, there would be fewer, if any, DDoS attacks.

Re:This May Work

[durrr]

"This sound is made as something passes over your head"

We have some great advice for you

[jayhawk88]

...but to be honest, Kuro5hin is paying us $1000 not to tell you. Perhaps if you would be willing to pony up $1500 we could do business.

Re:This May Work

[Culture20]

What is "Woosh"?
Internet memes for $400, please, Alex.

Re:This May Work

[Anonymous Coward]

DAILY DOUBLE

Re:Don't negotiate with cyber criminals?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay someone in Lebanon to DDoS his face :)