[GTER] Lycos Screensaver Site Blocked by Internet Backbones

[Ronaldo Vasconcellos]

Desculpem-me pelo xposting, achei relevante para ambas as listas.

Ronaldo
CAIS/RNP

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Lycos Screensaver Site Blocked by Internet Backbones
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/12/02/lycos_screensaver_site_blocked_by_internet_backbones.html

Paul at December 2, 2004 01:05 PM

Some major internet backbones are preventing access to the new Lycos 
"anti-spam" screensaver web site at www.MakeLoveNotSpam.com. This 
controversial site provides Internet users with the ability to participate 
in distributed attacks against web sites used by spammers, leaving the 
spammers with slow connections and high bandwidth costs.

Many users have reported problems accessing the web site since it was 
announced a few days ago. At first, these difficulties were thought to be 
as a result of the web site's success or revenge attacks by spammers. It 
now appears that some major Internet backbones are denying access to the 
IP address used to host www.MakeLoveNotSpam.com. Tracing a route to the 
host from Netcraft's main site in the UK reveals that access to the 
MakeLoveNotSpam.com site has been blackholed by Global Crossing's 
worldwide network, leaving the site accessible from some areas but not 
others:

www.MakeLoveNotSpam.com

A dynamically updating chart of site performance for MakeLoveNotSpam.com 
is available here.

Netcraft's uptime monitoring has thus reported consistent downtime from 
its monitoring sites in London, San Jose, and New York, with intermittent 
downtime from Amsterdam and Virginia. Netcraft's monitoring sites in 
Sydney and Pennsylvania have observed uninterrupted access to the web 
site.

The precise reasons for Global Crossing's action are unknown, but the 
blocking could seek to suppress the large amounts of Internet traffic 
typically generated during distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, 
which some people fear could be generated by the screensaver tool. There 
are reports that Cox Communications is also preventing users from 
accessing the site. Lycos Europe insists it is managing the traffic to 
merely slow the sites, rather than knock them entirely offline. 
Nonetheless, several targeted sites are unavailable.

F-Secure's weblog states that some of web sites targeted by the 
screensaver have used meta tags to redirect traffic back to the 
MakeLoveNotSpam.com web site; however, it is not clear that this has had 
any effect on the operation of the web site.

Debate continues about reports yesterday that the web site was defaced by 
hackers. Lycos has denied the site was hacked, saying journalists were 
misled by spoofed images circulated by spammers. But both F-Secure and 
ComputerWorld say readers report having seen the defacement on the 
MakeLoveNotSpam.com site.