Most liked posts in thread: We were attacked this past week....

In its simplest form data is broken down into packets to be transmitted across networks. The packets are re-assembled on the other end to be understood byt the receiver. Kinda like morse code is one letter at a time.

In this case the bad guys were sending extremely large volumes of data to the host servers for Facebook. The type of data really isn't important. Their goal was to make Facebook drink from the Firehose until they couldn't take any more and then just collapse.

Since the servers job is to respond to requests what happens is they get so bogged down in trying to deal with bad data that they cannot handle little suzie's request to "Like" Justin Bieber's new tattoo.

 

We were attacked this past week

Facebook was attacked. Please don't equate it with "we". I'm not even on Facebook.

 

Does anyone else think shutting down Facebook would be a bad idea?

Maybe people would go outside and see other people.:aureola:

 

Justin has a new tattoo?

 

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

 

I assume all that blue was massive amounts of.......what? emails? what exactly did they attack them with?

Back in the bad old days when I used to get virus and spam and all that, I used to dream about being able to send something right back that would blow up the computers of the bad guys.

wonder if Facebook could do that?

 

Newsflash!! MA NOW OWNS FACEBOOK?!
kinds late for April fools jokes?

 

Dave, you live on the forums...lol

 

I don't understand all the hate for Facebook, it's a tool like anything else - you can use it for your benefit or not - your call. But calling for it's demise seems a bit of an extreme reaction, and I find the people most offended by it are those who have never used it! Huh? How does that work?

To me that's like calling for the ban of cable companies when you don't have a TV.

I like Facebook, because I get to see pics of my family and friends who travel or live all over the world. Yes there are other ways I could see them, but that would require a lot of effort on their part, to send emails to all of their friends and family - the Facebook forum is ubiquitous and so much easier to use.

I do not post a pic of everyplace I go, or where I had lunch or what my sammich looked like, but I do put up the occasional short vid and pics of what I'm doing with Buzz and in return I get pics from friends and family all over the world - I can see no reason to ban that.

Thru Facebook I've found lost friends, high school buddies, stayed in touch with distant family members, talked to cousins I never met and have opened friendships with people I never seen in person - like I have on this forum. I like that too.

It is plagued with ads, and some people have decided to use it to post their views on politics and religion and so on - I simply check the "I don't want to see this" button and they're gone from my sight - what could be easier?

Banning Facebook is not the answer, any more than banning TV because there's nothing intelligent on to watch.

As for going outside and meeting people, that's a great idea...as soon as it cools off a bit so I don't suffer heatstroke 10 min after I step outside - of course all my neighbors are still indoors in the A/C anyway.....but I have met so many great friends thru my associations online - people I never would have known otherwise - I'm in awe of what a powerful thing the net has become to bring people together.

 

Could not agree more!

Last night while sitting at a red light a woman rolled thru the intersection in her giant Honda Oddity against the light, barely missing clipping a car making a turn with the green - and she never even looked up from yakking on the phone. I don't think she even knew she ran the light let alone almost killed someone.

I don't Tweet, or do Google circles, between forums and Facebook I'm online aplenty.....but those additional sites don't bother me......

Did you see where Ford is about to introduce a method of being able to text other cars? That's what we need more complicated distractions for the already driving challenged.....

 

Neither...it was a HUGE right wing conspiracy....

 

M/A has been subject to these same types of attacks. I won't go into how I defend the site from them now but it costs a pretty penny. I do think at times it is a protection racket.

 

Here's a plausible scenario: Facebook had been warned about the attack, and when it started they were unable to neutralize it. It took them 30 minutes to pay off the ransom...

 

Thanks for the explanation 05r50, I understand how the internet works (packets and so forth) but I was curious what they would be sending in such massive quantity, and how they coordinated it to happen at the same time?

So to fix it, Facebook shut down and did what? Just excluded any requests from China, or just from those addresses?

If the latter, couldn't they be vulnerable again, or did they write a patch that works something like what the stock market does when it senses a run and puts on the brakes?

 

Forums are not Facebook.

 

Dave I understand your point about Facebook, Google+ and possibly Twitter but the problem is when people are using them while driving.

That part drives me nuts.