Earlier this year Pastebin was under heavy attack by a hacker. This person was creating about 500 new pastes per second, all which were very much alike.

Earlier this year Pastebin was under heavy attack by a hacker. This person was creating about 500 new pastes per second, all which were very much alike. Each item contained an email address and a message saying that I had to contact that email address if I wanted this attack to stop. The requests came from thousands of different IP’s, but I managed to stop it for a few minutes until the hacker came up with another type of attack. Eventually I contacted the person in question. He replied that he was very impressed with my infrastructure, and that he wanted to know on what kind of hardware and software I was running. He was a big fan of Pastebin, and simply wanted to test the infrastructure. Of course I was fuming with anger at the time of the attack. Funnily enough, over time we got to know each other, and since then he has helped me guard off various other attacks. This quote from the story is the more important to me. It's a great example to explain to people what is a hacker when all they know about the word is what the television says.