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Sitting down and writing a blog-post seems a pretty laid back reaction to $30k/day in Amazon bills... First thing I'd have done is take the site offline and ca

by moe 12y ago

Sitting down and writing a blog-post seems a pretty laid back reaction to $30k/day in Amazon bills... First thing I'd have done is take the site offline and call the various DDoS mitigation services (Incapsula, Cloudflare, etc.). Pretty surely most of them would gladly pick up the slack here, given the free PR (possibly even in mainstream press) they get in return.

pi-err 12y ago
Not sure that turning the light off is the first thing you want to do when you're bullied. And pretty certain that there's zero PR value in those stories.
- ikeboy 12y ago
  Company under attack turns to this service to recover!
- johnpowell 12y ago
  Turning off the light is a great first step when wasted money is flying out of your wallet.
- chralieboy 12y ago
  They wouldn't just be giving in, it would take less than a day to get up and running on CloudFlare. That is probably worth avoiding $30k bill, especially for a non-profit. As for PR, there absolutely is good will towards organizations that take on censorship. This is the #1 story on HN, so a company stepping in and saying "we got this covered, free of charge" not only shows they are good people, but also gives would be customers an idea of the quick implementation cycle for their CDN + the load it can handle. Real world use case + helping to stop censorship = great PR
  - loganu 12y ago
    This is exactly what I was thinking. I read the blog post, then came to the comments. I completely expected something along the lines of ... "Hey, I'm the VP @ SomethingTech, we like what you're doing and will help you mitigate the attacks for free if you get in touch with us." ... to be the top comment here.
  - pi-err 12y ago
    My reaction was based on the interview where they say that the 30k$ charge was harming, not killing them. You're more knowledgeable than me on CloudFlare and it may very well be a strong option. Now in a way their $ penalty with this attack is not unlike growth. To me it sounds like they invested in their branding and will have a name as a company that can sustain damage and keep its ground - important because their goal is to be credible in bringing content in/out China. What if they had given in? They'd be yet another victim of an attack sort of linked with China. I do see a business sense behind what I assumed was their moral stance and I definitely stand by it.
  - pi-err 12y ago
    My reaction was based on the interview where they say that the 30k$ charge was harming, not killing them. You're more knowledgeable than me on CloudFlare and it may very well be a strong option. Now in a way their $ penalty with this attack is not unlike growth. To me it sounds like they invested in their branding and will have a name as a company that can sustain damage and keep its ground - important because their goal is to be credible in bringing content in/out China. What if they had given in? They'd be yet another victim of an attack sort of linked with China. I do see a business sense behind what I assumed was their moral stance and I definitely stand by it.
- moe 12y ago
  Not sure that turning the light off is the first thing you want to do when you're bullied. Unless your attitude is worth $20 USD per minute to you then yes, that's very much what you want to do. And pretty certain that there's zero PR value in those stories. Well, Greatfire seems to be betting a 6 figure stake on the opposite here...
- fixxer 12y ago
  Nonsense. Stop hemorrhaging $ first.
ErikRogneby 12y ago
Seems brilliant to me if you are trying to battle online censorship in China and get your message out. I agree that one of the mitigation services could benefit from some pro-bono services.
- superobserver 12y ago
  I agree with this. Silently allowing a bully/attacker do as they want is never acceptable. I find GreatFire.org's work commendable and hope they get the help they need.
jsn 12y ago
For them, using a DDoS mitigation service might be harder than it seems. Their project, "Collateral Freedom", depends on having a set of web frontends with some special properties. Namely, 1) the provider of the said frontends must be willing to ignore takedown / access restriction requests from (Chinese, Russian, etc) authorities, and 2) the access to those frontends can't be easily blocked by the Great Firewall of China / Russia / etc without causing massive problems to some unrelated widely used services. (full disclosure: I do devops for one of the Russian sites that is currently mirrored by Collateral Freedom)
woah 12y ago
If they're a non profit, then maybe this is exactly what their mission is. They can sit back and rack up a huge aws bill, then Amazon has to decide whether to collect. If they do collect, then that was what the money was for anyway. I'm guessing that giving in to bullying from the Chinese government is against their core principles here.
- acqq 12y ago
  As xnull6guest already noted, they are most probably already financed by the US government, that's why they can be laid back: they are exactly doing what they are paid for.
frozenport 12y ago
Its also toxic PR if you want to expand in the Chinese market.

by moe 12y ago

pi-err 12y ago

Not sure that turning the light off is the first thing you want to do when you're bullied. And pretty certain that there's zero PR value in those stories.

ikeboy 12y ago
Company under attack turns to this service to recover!
johnpowell 12y ago
Turning off the light is a great first step when wasted money is flying out of your wallet.
chralieboy 12y ago
They wouldn't just be giving in, it would take less than a day to get up and running on CloudFlare. That is probably worth avoiding $30k bill, especially for a non-profit. As for PR, there absolutely is good will towards organizations that take on censorship. This is the #1 story on HN, so a company stepping in and saying "we got this covered, free of charge" not only shows they are good people, but also gives would be customers an idea of the quick implementation cycle for their CDN + the load it can handle. Real world use case + helping to stop censorship = great PR
- loganu 12y ago
  This is exactly what I was thinking. I read the blog post, then came to the comments. I completely expected something along the lines of ... "Hey, I'm the VP @ SomethingTech, we like what you're doing and will help you mitigate the attacks for free if you get in touch with us." ... to be the top comment here.
- pi-err 12y ago
  My reaction was based on the interview where they say that the 30k$ charge was harming, not killing them. You're more knowledgeable than me on CloudFlare and it may very well be a strong option. Now in a way their $ penalty with this attack is not unlike growth. To me it sounds like they invested in their branding and will have a name as a company that can sustain damage and keep its ground - important because their goal is to be credible in bringing content in/out China. What if they had given in? They'd be yet another victim of an attack sort of linked with China. I do see a business sense behind what I assumed was their moral stance and I definitely stand by it.
- pi-err 12y ago
  My reaction was based on the interview where they say that the 30k$ charge was harming, not killing them. You're more knowledgeable than me on CloudFlare and it may very well be a strong option. Now in a way their $ penalty with this attack is not unlike growth. To me it sounds like they invested in their branding and will have a name as a company that can sustain damage and keep its ground - important because their goal is to be credible in bringing content in/out China. What if they had given in? They'd be yet another victim of an attack sort of linked with China. I do see a business sense behind what I assumed was their moral stance and I definitely stand by it.
moe 12y ago
Not sure that turning the light off is the first thing you want to do when you're bullied. Unless your attitude is worth $20 USD per minute to you then yes, that's very much what you want to do. And pretty certain that there's zero PR value in those stories. Well, Greatfire seems to be betting a 6 figure stake on the opposite here...
fixxer 12y ago
Nonsense. Stop hemorrhaging $ first.

ErikRogneby 12y ago

Seems brilliant to me if you are trying to battle online censorship in China and get your message out. I agree that one of the mitigation services could benefit from some pro-bono services.

superobserver 12y ago
I agree with this. Silently allowing a bully/attacker do as they want is never acceptable. I find GreatFire.org's work commendable and hope they get the help they need.

jsn 12y ago

For them, using a DDoS mitigation service might be harder than it seems. Their project, "Collateral Freedom", depends on having a set of web frontends with some special properties. Namely, 1) the provider of the said frontends must be willing to ignore takedown / access restriction requests from (Chinese, Russian, etc) authorities, and 2) the access to those frontends can't be easily blocked by the Great Firewall of China / Russia / etc without causing massive problems to some unrelated widely used services. (full disclosure: I do devops for one of the Russian sites that is currently mirrored by Collateral Freedom)

woah 12y ago

If they're a non profit, then maybe this is exactly what their mission is. They can sit back and rack up a huge aws bill, then Amazon has to decide whether to collect. If they do collect, then that was what the money was for anyway. I'm guessing that giving in to bullying from the Chinese government is against their core principles here.

acqq 12y ago
As xnull6guest already noted, they are most probably already financed by the US government, that's why they can be laid back: they are exactly doing what they are paid for.

frozenport 12y ago

Its also toxic PR if you want to expand in the Chinese market.