I Went to a Russian Website and All I Got Was This Lousy Teapot
Russian cyberwarfare attacks on Ukraine are constantly in the news. While you don’t hear as much about internet-based attacks on Russia, this cyberwar is not a one-sided affair. Important Russian military sites have been subject to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, as have major Russian banks. Defenders of Russian internet infrastructure have taken measures to fend off these attacks, and one of those measures has resulted in some rather odd error messages. First, some background.
Denial of service is a simple concept and works both in real life and online. A schoolkid might prank the local deli by calling over and over to make weird requests. A smart salami slicer could block the caller’s number, or just ignore calls from that number. And a smart kid could keep the prank rolling by enlisting friends to call, so the phone never stops ringing. That smart kid has just invented the Distributed Denial of Service attack.
In internet terms, a denial of service attack isn’t much different. The attacker hammers a server with requests, typically using message types that require some processing by the server. The server’s logical response is to block the attacker’s IP address. One way around that defense is to get a bot-type malware program installed on thousands of unsuspecting computers. When the bot army is ready, the bot-herder unleashes those infected computers on the target server, bombarding it with data requests from myriad sources. This kind of attack is a lot harder to block.
The poor beleaguered delicatessen proprietor could get some relief by setting the phone to only ring for known customers, though that would put a damper on new business. New customers aren’t a problem for Russian internet mavens. They
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