Isp

Giant scale DDoS tops 40 Gbps

Paul Mah — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:35:10 -0500

Arbor Networks has released the fourth edition of its Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report, which summarizes the responses of 70 lead security engineers worldwide. The report indicates that the largest DDoS attacks have grown a hundredfold from their humble megabit beginnings in 2000, scaling to more than 40 gigabit this year. More worrisome is the statement that "the growth in attack size continues to significantly outpace the corresponding increase in underlying transmission speed and ISP infrastructure investment."

Still, it appears that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) surveyed are less worried about DDoS attacks than they were a year ago. Instead, more than half are battling an increase in service-level attacks that attempt to exploit vulnerabilities and limitations of computing resources. Chief scientist for Arbor, Craig Labovitz, explains, "Sophisticated, service-level attacks...wouldn't show up as a multigigabit DDoS. But they are still enough to cause outages on large, distributed services." Overall though, ISPs did admit that the main threat they face comes from "external, brute force attacks," or in other words, DDoS. Arbor Networks released an earlier study in August that revealed negligible IPv6 usage.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at ZDNet News
- check out this blog post at Arbor Networks
- check out this article at DarkReading

BT threatens to oust P2Pers

Paul Mah — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:13:23 -0400

UK's largest broadband provider, British Telecoms, has started sending out warnings to users caught using peer-to-peer (P2P) networks to download music illegally. According to a BT broadband customer who received one such warning, the email contains alleged evidence that has been collected by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Working with the ISP is a relatively new track employed by the record industry to curb piracy, which is probably a better idea than trying to sue dead grannies, like RIAA unwittingly found itself doing.

In this instance, no customer information is divulged, as BPI investigators simply furnish details such as the user agent, timestamp, filename and an IP number to the ISP of the offender. Assuming a working arrangement with the ISP, the ISP will identify and communicate the warning directly to the alleged offender. It remains to be seen if such an approach will catch on elsewhere.

For more information on this report:
- check out this The Register article

Google to develop software to detect ISP throttling

Paul Mah — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:41:58 -0400

Always vocal about its stance in favor of net neutrality, Google has finally thrown down the gauntlet and declared that it is working on software tools that will enable users to detect whether their broadband connections are being manipulated by their ISPs. This was revealed by the Senior Policy Director for Google, Richard Whitt, who said this during a panel discussion at Santa Clara University.

According to Whitt, the idea is that customers at least be able to find out if they are being throttled, and then let their unhappiness be known to their ISPs. Not everyone agrees though. In a detailed post, Technology Consultant George Ou outlined how a single BitTorrent user can ruin the broadband experience in a typical household.

For more on ISP throttling detection:
- check out this HotHardware article