zomgpwn!

Anonymous - 488 | Scientology - 716,949,386,024

We didn't wanna dip out toes in this (cess)pool until we got some reliable statistics on the DDoS ruckus laid down by Xenu and friends.  We finally have it, so let's get this party started.

If you don't know the background, shame on you.  Go read this.

Here's the part we're most interested in though.

Exhibit A:

• Number of attacks measured on scientology.org: 488 in the past week
• Attacks by date: 488 on January 19, 2008
• Maximum PPS rates seen: nearly 20000 pps (packets per second), with an average attack size of 15,000 pps
• Maximum bandwidth seen per attack: 220 Mbps, with an average attack size of 168 Mbps. This is on the high side of an attack, but significantly smaller than the largest ones we commonly see nowadays
• Maximum duration of a single attack: 1.8 hours, which is on the long end of common, but the average attack lasted just under half an hour

Exhibit B:

• Site                      http://www.scientology.org
• Last reboot          28 days ago
• Domain                scientology.org
• IP address           72.52.6.28
• Netblock owner   Prolexic Technologies, Inc.  <====!!!

Well then.  Nicely played, LRH.

Translation?  Anonymous actually DID hit Scientology's Apache Linux box pretty hard a week ago.  Then the organization (we're treading lightly here) did probably the smartest thing it could have.  It signed up Prolexic to substitute one of their servers and filter down the flood to a trickle.

Now of COURSE we realize that this wasn't the ONLY denial of service dropped on Scientramopolay.  (look in your heart, hackinatorz... look in your heart!) We just wonder if it was the biggest, or what else is coming.  It's fun to see Digg gamed the right way for a change and even though we've watched and re-watched the original Anonymous YT vid enough that we now don motorcycle helmets in our meetings and only communicate with each other via text to speech tools, it has us all a twitter with what could pownceably be next from our new favorite bunch of waxxorz haxxorz.   Even lolcats are in on this one.

Our vote is that Anonymous should start their own church and possibly even take over TMZ's slot on your local Fox affiliate.  They are sooo much more entertaining than Harvey Levin, and Harvey is no slouch.  Well.. OK he's a slouch.  We still think he's pretty awesome.

Also we'd just like to point out that we value the notion of free expression in the good old U. S. of A.  People should always worship who they want to worship, or not.  Not only is the line between legality vs. illegality ONLINE a slightly blurry one, it must be taken into account that Chanologists are OPENLY declaring war.  You know what they say about that and Lllllllllove.  (puke)  While the m$m and a lot of smaller 'news' outlets are chuckling to themselves about what the 'kids' are doing on the intertubes, remember... you have been warned.

We can't endorse either side, mainly due to our lack of a solid legal team.  However we DID see an episode of Matlock in a bar last night. The sound was turned down but we're pretty sure we got the gist of it.

Qaeda don't Skype

OK, so it's a slow day.  We've started, then abandoned posts on the following topics.

Faux News Channel manages to out-stupid itself; gets smacked silly by Keighly.

HTML 5 finally here... almost.

Artificial life is real.  Wait, what?!

AT&T preps "Ministry Of Truth", readies 'thoughtcrimes' filtering online.

Then we saw THIS nugget and we couldn't resist.  al Qaeda's #2 crocktard A-a-Z is taking questions on the freaking intarwebz!  WTH?!  OK, ok... so far the questions have just been submitted but isn't that kind of ballsy, even for these guys?  It gives us a slightly queasy feeling to know that they are comfortable enough to even think about casually chewing the non-pork fat with their peeps.

Actually it almost seems innocuous, until you start to read the questions that have been submitted.  Even allowing for cultural differences, we're just a little bit unnerved - and it's not even because we're on our third cup of coffee.

The only plus we can see in this whole weird development is that there DOES seem to be a considerable LACK of communication between AQ's devotees and the official power structure.  Most of the questions we've seen are so varied and so broad in nature that it gives a picture of disarray, if not downright confusion.  Good enough for us.  As freaky as it is to see someone demanding that the jihad be spread into Egypt and Palestine immediately, it would be a lot freakier if homeboy Ayman actually started responding.

So, we'll just pretend that it's a big, early April Fool's joke for now and laugh nervously while we try not to click on any links that will get us tossed into the 'persons of interest' file we've heard so much about.

All we can say is, we reallly hope this guy jumps onto Skype or some VoIP service so an AC-130 can cruise by to weigh in on the discussion.  C'mon, fignuts!  Pick up the webcam and let's do this thing.