DDOS

Let's begin with an explanation of what happened to WikiLeaks last week. The site came under a mass distributed denial of service attack. From who, we know not. But it managed to shut down the site for quite a while.

A DDOS attack is simple. The basic goal is to overload a server until it crashes. You see, in order to connect to a server, your system sends a packet of data to the server, called a SYN. The server responds with its own packet, called an ACK. When you receive the ACK, it is sent right back to the server, and thus you are connected. Now, if the ACK is not sent back, then the server sends up to four more to try and get a response from you. This is what DDOS uses to its advantage.

When a metric crapton of random computers all send a ridiculous amount of SYNs to a server, the server has to reply with an equal amount of ACKs. In a DDOS attack, the computers do not respond, thus causing the server to send four ACKs instead of just one. When as many computers do this as fast as possible, it effectively quadruples the bandwidth usage of the server. If enough people do it, it can't handle the traffic and shuts down. WikiLeaks had this issue.

Now, in light of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and other companies refusing support to WikiLeaks, sites like 4chan are coordinating the same attacks on them. In the past 24 hours, MasterCard's and Visa's sites were both temporarily shut down. PayPal was pretty much brought to its knees. A number of transactions made during this time have not gone through or screwed up because of it; these sites—especially PayPal—rely on the Internet.

What I'm trying to say is, a War of the Internet has begun. On one side is WikiLeaks and its supporters; on the other, the US government and every corporation it can get to fall in line with it.