9 ms·

I think it's far more likely that someone decided to mess with the party all the Boston observers are having on Reddit. It's all idle speculation, though.

Achshar 13y ago
Yes, reddit was up for a bit and I saw two (edit: now four) huge threads with 10k+ comments and live updates from the shoot out in Boston. So maybe they are indeed messing with the Boston live event updates thing on reddit. DDOSing reddit is no small feat, unless you have a botnet at your disposal. Should be more than just some "fun".
- mh- 13y ago
  I don't have data to back me up other than an anecdotal 'I seem to notice', but doesn't reddit often become unusable during exceptional usage spikes? the Obama AMA comes to mind. if you look at their numbers[1] for 2012, it's plausible that they are simply overwhelmed during these bursts and they've judged it worthwhile to let these aberrations play out. for many operations.. moving your availability from, say, 99.9% to 99.99% is simply not worth the cost. uptime is hard; GitHub has only maintained 99.96% for the past month[2][3] (and, IMO, they're actively trying to improve it) [1]: http://blog.reddit.com/2012/12/top-posts-of-year-and-best-of-2012.html http://blog.reddit.com/2012/12/top-posts-of-year-and-best-of... [2]: https://status.github.com/graphs/past_month https://status.github.com/graphs/past_month [3]: http://cl.ly/image/0O2S0L3O0l3J http://cl.ly/image/0O2S0L3O0l3J edit: clean up links edit2: learning \n
  - Achshar 13y ago
    But reddit confirmed it's malicious, so the idea that reddit DDOSed itself is out of the question.
dmarti21 13y ago
I would think it is a malicious attack in response to Reddit incorrectly identifying and popularizing the idea that Sunil Tripathi was one of the Boston Marathon bombers.
- Achshar 13y ago
  Unlikely, why would someone retaliate? Who on Tripathi's side has such power? Right now we are not even sure if the attack is related to boston events at all.
  - trhtrsh 13y ago
    The LOIC does.

Achshar 13y ago

Yes, reddit was up for a bit and I saw two (edit: now four) huge threads with 10k+ comments and live updates from the shoot out in Boston. So maybe they are indeed messing with the Boston live event updates thing on reddit. DDOSing reddit is no small feat, unless you have a botnet at your disposal. Should be more than just some "fun".

mh- 13y ago
I don't have data to back me up other than an anecdotal 'I seem to notice', but doesn't reddit often become unusable during exceptional usage spikes? the Obama AMA comes to mind. if you look at their numbers[1] for 2012, it's plausible that they are simply overwhelmed during these bursts and they've judged it worthwhile to let these aberrations play out. for many operations.. moving your availability from, say, 99.9% to 99.99% is simply not worth the cost. uptime is hard; GitHub has only maintained 99.96% for the past month[2][3] (and, IMO, they're actively trying to improve it) [1]: http://blog.reddit.com/2012/12/top-posts-of-year-and-best-of-2012.html http://blog.reddit.com/2012/12/top-posts-of-year-and-best-of... [2]: https://status.github.com/graphs/past_month https://status.github.com/graphs/past_month [3]: http://cl.ly/image/0O2S0L3O0l3J http://cl.ly/image/0O2S0L3O0l3J edit: clean up links edit2: learning \n
- Achshar 13y ago
  But reddit confirmed it's malicious, so the idea that reddit DDOSed itself is out of the question.

dmarti21 13y ago

I would think it is a malicious attack in response to Reddit incorrectly identifying and popularizing the idea that Sunil Tripathi was one of the Boston Marathon bombers.

Achshar 13y ago
Unlikely, why would someone retaliate? Who on Tripathi's side has such power? Right now we are not even sure if the attack is related to boston events at all.
- trhtrsh 13y ago
  The LOIC does.