Denial of Service: New or Old?
January 29, 2011 4:51 PM Subscribe
Are denial-of-service attacks a new idea?
By new, I mean since the internet. It seems perfectly conceivable that such an attack could have been employed, using the plain old phone system, against a company that relied heavily on phone calls for their business.
Are there any known cases of, say, a bank being blasted with phone calls by an organized group of detractors?
By new, I mean since the internet. It seems perfectly conceivable that such an attack could have been employed, using the plain old phone system, against a company that relied heavily on phone calls for their business.
Are there any known cases of, say, a bank being blasted with phone calls by an organized group of detractors?
Black faxes have been used to harass large institutions or government departments
posted by desjardins at 4:54 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by desjardins at 4:54 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
You could argue that both a union strike and the sit-ins of the 1960's civil rights movement were forms of denial-of-service, I think, but that's not how the term's typically used.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 4:55 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 4:55 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Not exactly what you're looking for, but I think kids do this to their mothers all the time:
"Mom."
"Not now, son, I'm talking."
[conversation continues]
"Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Hey Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Hey Mom. Mom."
"WHAT?"
[other conversation is over until son gets an answer]
More to the point, people have been known to take a company's FAX offline by repeatedly faxing black pages.
posted by johnofjack at 4:56 PM on January 29, 2011 [3 favorites]
"Mom."
"Not now, son, I'm talking."
[conversation continues]
"Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Hey Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Hey Mom. Mom."
"WHAT?"
[other conversation is over until son gets an answer]
More to the point, people have been known to take a company's FAX offline by repeatedly faxing black pages.
posted by johnofjack at 4:56 PM on January 29, 2011 [3 favorites]
There are famous phone phreaking exploits of the 1970s that involved service disruptions, line jamming, etc. I cannot recall the details off the top of my head right now, but this person almost certainly will.
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:58 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:58 PM on January 29, 2011
Also, the general idea of a siege or a naval blockade is a type of denial-of-service as well.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 4:58 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 4:58 PM on January 29, 2011
NBC broke into the Eastern Conference semifinals n the NBA
Sorry, it was the Finals, not the semifinals.
posted by dfriedman at 5:03 PM on January 29, 2011
Sorry, it was the Finals, not the semifinals.
posted by dfriedman at 5:03 PM on January 29, 2011
The British National Party (right wing xenophobes) used to have a freepost address until anti-fascist groups started sending them lots of letters.
posted by knapah at 5:12 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by knapah at 5:12 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Supposedly Kevin Poulsen did this to win a Porsche
There are more recent examples from the world of politics
posted by Ad hominem at 5:36 PM on January 29, 2011
There are more recent examples from the world of politics
posted by Ad hominem at 5:36 PM on January 29, 2011
Union picketing is a form of denial of service.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:02 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:02 PM on January 29, 2011
Denial of service as an attack vector basically involves a stream of attack that consumes resources somewhere along the line that prevents legitimate communication. This type of attack has been going on in various forms for probably 100 years at this point. It used to be that it took form in jamming or overwhelming radio transmission with noise. Effectively eating up the available spectrum to prevent legitimate signals from being comprehended. As communications mediums have evolved there has nearly always been events of intentional or unintentional denial of service, from analog phone systems to the modern internet.
These days you see the term thrown around much more often for a number of reasons; mostly because more people use the communications medium and disrupting communications has become a more commodity based thing. DoS attacks in the modern context require far less technical knowledge than they did in the past and those attacks have far greater exposure than they would have in the bell system days or in the old telegraph or even point to point radio days.
While DoS attacks have become more prevalent, as a very real thing they are actually harder to make effective. The abundance of bandwidth and evolution of the modern DoS has sprung up whole new entities and industries to deal with mitigating DoS as a threat to critical or revenue generating infrastructure. These days if you intent to defend against a denial of service it's actually rather easy to make them nothing more than mildly annoying.
In the analog telephone days there was actually very little you could do against a denial of service attack, properly conducted that is, short of cutting out the offending trunk groups/etc. Similar things happen today with IP addresses, but honestly most blocking of actual traffic in a modern context happens via inspection at layers 4-7 and is done custom silicon. The analog telephone days were the days of blue boxers, where knocking out the communications as a way to attract attention or deny service wasn't the focus so much, it was more to gain knowledge or use services without paying for them. There is still some of that type of thing going on, in the late 90's and early 2000's this manifested itself in the behavior known as carding. This is still a reasonably heavy black market business, but the credit card companies have gotten much better and flagging behavior in real time. At the end of the day they basically decided to shield consumers to some extend from fraudulent transactions. In some sense this can still be a denial of service, as with enough information you can essentially create a behavior pattern for someone that will cause goods and service providers to not provide them any services.
posted by iamabot at 7:38 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
These days you see the term thrown around much more often for a number of reasons; mostly because more people use the communications medium and disrupting communications has become a more commodity based thing. DoS attacks in the modern context require far less technical knowledge than they did in the past and those attacks have far greater exposure than they would have in the bell system days or in the old telegraph or even point to point radio days.
While DoS attacks have become more prevalent, as a very real thing they are actually harder to make effective. The abundance of bandwidth and evolution of the modern DoS has sprung up whole new entities and industries to deal with mitigating DoS as a threat to critical or revenue generating infrastructure. These days if you intent to defend against a denial of service it's actually rather easy to make them nothing more than mildly annoying.
In the analog telephone days there was actually very little you could do against a denial of service attack, properly conducted that is, short of cutting out the offending trunk groups/etc. Similar things happen today with IP addresses, but honestly most blocking of actual traffic in a modern context happens via inspection at layers 4-7 and is done custom silicon. The analog telephone days were the days of blue boxers, where knocking out the communications as a way to attract attention or deny service wasn't the focus so much, it was more to gain knowledge or use services without paying for them. There is still some of that type of thing going on, in the late 90's and early 2000's this manifested itself in the behavior known as carding. This is still a reasonably heavy black market business, but the credit card companies have gotten much better and flagging behavior in real time. At the end of the day they basically decided to shield consumers to some extend from fraudulent transactions. In some sense this can still be a denial of service, as with enough information you can essentially create a behavior pattern for someone that will cause goods and service providers to not provide them any services.
posted by iamabot at 7:38 PM on January 29, 2011 [2 favorites]
The filibuster might be considered a form of denial of service as the person filibustering floods the debate with nonsense, obstructing any actual debate from occurring. It dates back to Roman times according to wikipedia.
posted by Rhomboid at 8:50 PM on January 29, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by Rhomboid at 8:50 PM on January 29, 2011 [3 favorites]
There are pranks, surely, which involve putting someone's phone number on a poster, leaflet etc., which offers some attractive product or service? Or indeed a toilet wall. The person gets lots of phone calls from interested parties, which denies them the service of their phone line.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 9:37 PM on January 29, 2011
posted by AmbroseChapel at 9:37 PM on January 29, 2011
Years ago when I was in college one class had required reading in a book from the library. The library only had a couple copies of the book. The class was graded on a curve. It was common for students to check them out and not return them so they could get better grades by keeping it from other students.
(Yes, this was stupid, but tenured professors...)
It's also no unheard of for people to buy/steal all of a specific book off the shelf to prevent the spread of certain knowledge.
I'd love to see a DOS against a store. Tons of people get in line to buy something tiny and pay with pennies or two party out of state unsigned checks. With a coupon. And then return it.
posted by Ookseer at 10:58 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
(Yes, this was stupid, but tenured professors...)
It's also no unheard of for people to buy/steal all of a specific book off the shelf to prevent the spread of certain knowledge.
I'd love to see a DOS against a store. Tons of people get in line to buy something tiny and pay with pennies or two party out of state unsigned checks. With a coupon. And then return it.
posted by Ookseer at 10:58 PM on January 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
iamabot: "In the analog telephone days there was actually very little you could do against a denial of service attack …"
Related to this, but looking at it a bit from the other direction: In Australia at least, likely targets of unintentional DoS 'attacks' - radio/tv competition lines, taxi companies, etc; any destination that was expected to get sudden surges of traffic - were allocated to specific number ranges. This was so traffic could be restricted near the source - the originating and / or transit exchanges could quickly analyse the number dialled based on the first few digits, and routes towards the destination were severely restricted in their capacity.
In the case of e.g. radio competition lines, each local exchange only had 2, maybe 4, circuits to handle the traffic i.e. less than a handful of calls from each exchange area (2~10,000 lines) could even begin to be successful - to keep the exchange uncongested, the rest would be thrown back to busy tone from the customer's line circuit. Those circuits then (usually) went to a transit exchange which itself was restricted towards the destination i.e. a transit serving say 300,000 lines in a region would itself only have 8~16 circuits heading towards the radio station's home exchange - the rest would, again, be thrown back to busy tone either at the incoming interface or all the way back to the customer's line circuit (depending on originating technology). Finally, at the destination exchange, there were call allocators or restricted lines to the station itself, to once again limit the calls down to a final handful.
Similar design consideration went into the routes for things like taxi companies, which were expected to get large numbers of calls at certain times (e.g. when the pubs / clubs closed, after football / cricket games, etc.) - the number of available circuits was higher, but the overall purpose was the same; to limit traffic to non-exchange-congesting levels.
On top of this, later-model (e.g. 1950's ;-) equipment was designed to give priority to outgoing over incoming for customer services; additionally, it was possible to give certain services (e.g. doctors surgeries) outgoing priority in the case of the local switch being overloaded with traffic. Even later-model (e.g. 1970's ;-) equipment was designed with some ability to recognise and semi-automatically restrict incoming traffic to otherwise unremarkable destinations, as happens in a DoS attack.
Basically, the appropriate bits of the network ware designed to both load and rate-limit traffic to expected high-traffic destinations, to minimise congestion due to suddenly unexpected high traffic to unexpected destinations (e.g. DoS against some random target), and to allow those destinations to continue functioning when swamped, by mostly automatically passing the buck for regulation back to the originating point. By comparison, the internet infrastructure's ability to handle DoS attacks sometimes seems rather crude…
(Where I did my telco apprenticeship, we were lucky (!) enough to have both a taxi company on the local switch and a transit exchange handling the radio competition route for half the city. While I did partake in a bit of technical skullduggery to jump to the head of the taxi phone queue on occasion, I wasn't like some others who found ways to narrow the odds of winning the latest LP from 1 in 600,000 to about 1 in 32…)
Ookseer: "I'd love to see a DOS against a store."
I'm sure I've read of an historical - Victorian, or maybe even older - example of that. Can't for the life of me think of where I know it from, though…
posted by Pinback at 11:56 PM on January 29, 2011
Related to this, but looking at it a bit from the other direction: In Australia at least, likely targets of unintentional DoS 'attacks' - radio/tv competition lines, taxi companies, etc; any destination that was expected to get sudden surges of traffic - were allocated to specific number ranges. This was so traffic could be restricted near the source - the originating and / or transit exchanges could quickly analyse the number dialled based on the first few digits, and routes towards the destination were severely restricted in their capacity.
In the case of e.g. radio competition lines, each local exchange only had 2, maybe 4, circuits to handle the traffic i.e. less than a handful of calls from each exchange area (2~10,000 lines) could even begin to be successful - to keep the exchange uncongested, the rest would be thrown back to busy tone from the customer's line circuit. Those circuits then (usually) went to a transit exchange which itself was restricted towards the destination i.e. a transit serving say 300,000 lines in a region would itself only have 8~16 circuits heading towards the radio station's home exchange - the rest would, again, be thrown back to busy tone either at the incoming interface or all the way back to the customer's line circuit (depending on originating technology). Finally, at the destination exchange, there were call allocators or restricted lines to the station itself, to once again limit the calls down to a final handful.
Similar design consideration went into the routes for things like taxi companies, which were expected to get large numbers of calls at certain times (e.g. when the pubs / clubs closed, after football / cricket games, etc.) - the number of available circuits was higher, but the overall purpose was the same; to limit traffic to non-exchange-congesting levels.
On top of this, later-model (e.g. 1950's ;-) equipment was designed to give priority to outgoing over incoming for customer services; additionally, it was possible to give certain services (e.g. doctors surgeries) outgoing priority in the case of the local switch being overloaded with traffic. Even later-model (e.g. 1970's ;-) equipment was designed with some ability to recognise and semi-automatically restrict incoming traffic to otherwise unremarkable destinations, as happens in a DoS attack.
Basically, the appropriate bits of the network ware designed to both load and rate-limit traffic to expected high-traffic destinations, to minimise congestion due to suddenly unexpected high traffic to unexpected destinations (e.g. DoS against some random target), and to allow those destinations to continue functioning when swamped, by mostly automatically passing the buck for regulation back to the originating point. By comparison, the internet infrastructure's ability to handle DoS attacks sometimes seems rather crude…
(Where I did my telco apprenticeship, we were lucky (!) enough to have both a taxi company on the local switch and a transit exchange handling the radio competition route for half the city. While I did partake in a bit of technical skullduggery to jump to the head of the taxi phone queue on occasion, I wasn't like some others who found ways to narrow the odds of winning the latest LP from 1 in 600,000 to about 1 in 32…)
Ookseer: "I'd love to see a DOS against a store."
I'm sure I've read of an historical - Victorian, or maybe even older - example of that. Can't for the life of me think of where I know it from, though…
posted by Pinback at 11:56 PM on January 29, 2011
In the analog telephone days there was actually very little you could do against a denial of service attack, properly conducted that is, short of cutting out the offending trunk groups/etc.
While true, it was much, much harder to coordinate a denial of service attack then than it is now. Getting more than a handful of people to do one task at the same time for free isn't as easy as you'd think.
posted by jedrek at 5:56 AM on January 30, 2011
While true, it was much, much harder to coordinate a denial of service attack then than it is now. Getting more than a handful of people to do one task at the same time for free isn't as easy as you'd think.
posted by jedrek at 5:56 AM on January 30, 2011
1996 was the first big denial of service attack on multiple internet sites. You can read about it here.
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:04 AM on January 30, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:04 AM on January 30, 2011 [1 favorite]
DoS in the classroom: the Smartarse in class asks the teacher to tell us that story about the war again. I'm pretty sure that has been going on as long as there have been gullible teachers and students that don't want to do the required work, that is, since always.
posted by ultrabuff at 9:08 AM on January 30, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by ultrabuff at 9:08 AM on January 30, 2011 [1 favorite]
Was Telethon Opposition Conspiracy or Coincidence? (June 1, 1983)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Democratic Party official calls it a "conspiracy", but the Rev. Jerry Falwell says it was just a "coincidence" that attempts by the Moral Majority and the Republican Party to stir opposition to a Democratic fund-raising telethon sounded so much alike.
Bob Neuman, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, cited "striking similarities" Tuesday between the messages sent out by the Republicans and the Moral Majority.
He noted that the cablegram sent out May 18 by GOP Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. and the letter sent eight days later by Falwell recommended similar courses of action.
Each used numbered paragraphs to urge their followers to (1) watch the Democratic fund-raising telethon broadcast on May 28 and 29 on NBC and (2) call the toll-free number.
The Falwell letter, sent to 100,000 supporters of his conservative group, also urged readers in the second numbered paragraph to "let them know that you support the president and resent their slanted distortions."
The Fahrenkopf cablegram, sent to nearly one million Republicans, went to a paragraph numered (3) to urge recipients to "tell them you support the president. Tell them what you think of their unfair attacks on our party. Let them know you do not buy their distortions."
The next paragraph in the Falwell letter asked for a $15 contribution to the Moral Majority, while the GOP cablegram asked recipients to send $15 to the party.
Cal Thomas, spokesman for the Moral Majority, said he talked to Falwell about the Neuman allegations and that the fundamentalist minister said there was "no consultation" with GOP officials "before, during or after" he sent his letter.
Thomas and Falwell called any similarity a coincidence.
"We've got some people who think like we do, fortunately, at the RNC and that accounts for the similarity in the messages," Thomas added.
"This thing smacks of conspiracy," said Neuman.
The Democrats are claiming the cablegram and the letter were part of a campaign to jam their telephone lines and prevent people from pledging money to the opposition party.
Neuman said the party's lawyers were "building a rather juicy case" to claim damages for interfering with their fund-raising program.
Despite the appeals by opponents of the 17-hour telethon, the Democrats said they received about $20 million in pledges.
posted by dhartung at 1:37 PM on January 30, 2011 [1 favorite]
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Democratic Party official calls it a "conspiracy", but the Rev. Jerry Falwell says it was just a "coincidence" that attempts by the Moral Majority and the Republican Party to stir opposition to a Democratic fund-raising telethon sounded so much alike.
Bob Neuman, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, cited "striking similarities" Tuesday between the messages sent out by the Republicans and the Moral Majority.
He noted that the cablegram sent out May 18 by GOP Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. and the letter sent eight days later by Falwell recommended similar courses of action.
Each used numbered paragraphs to urge their followers to (1) watch the Democratic fund-raising telethon broadcast on May 28 and 29 on NBC and (2) call the toll-free number.
The Falwell letter, sent to 100,000 supporters of his conservative group, also urged readers in the second numbered paragraph to "let them know that you support the president and resent their slanted distortions."
The Fahrenkopf cablegram, sent to nearly one million Republicans, went to a paragraph numered (3) to urge recipients to "tell them you support the president. Tell them what you think of their unfair attacks on our party. Let them know you do not buy their distortions."
The next paragraph in the Falwell letter asked for a $15 contribution to the Moral Majority, while the GOP cablegram asked recipients to send $15 to the party.
Cal Thomas, spokesman for the Moral Majority, said he talked to Falwell about the Neuman allegations and that the fundamentalist minister said there was "no consultation" with GOP officials "before, during or after" he sent his letter.
Thomas and Falwell called any similarity a coincidence.
"We've got some people who think like we do, fortunately, at the RNC and that accounts for the similarity in the messages," Thomas added.
"This thing smacks of conspiracy," said Neuman.
The Democrats are claiming the cablegram and the letter were part of a campaign to jam their telephone lines and prevent people from pledging money to the opposition party.
Neuman said the party's lawyers were "building a rather juicy case" to claim damages for interfering with their fund-raising program.
Despite the appeals by opponents of the 17-hour telethon, the Democrats said they received about $20 million in pledges.
posted by dhartung at 1:37 PM on January 30, 2011 [1 favorite]
Ookseer: "I'd love to see a DOS against a store."
Pinback: I'm sure I've read of an historical - Victorian, or maybe even older - example of that. Can't for the life of me think of where I know it from, though…
I wonder if you're thinking of the Berners Street Hoax of 1810?
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:54 PM on January 30, 2011
Pinback: I'm sure I've read of an historical - Victorian, or maybe even older - example of that. Can't for the life of me think of where I know it from, though…
I wonder if you're thinking of the Berners Street Hoax of 1810?
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:54 PM on January 30, 2011
Putting glue in a door lock could be considered a denial of service attack.
posted by fings at 2:36 PM on January 30, 2011
posted by fings at 2:36 PM on January 30, 2011
Sit-ins.
posted by Jacqueline at 11:00 PM on January 30, 2011
posted by Jacqueline at 11:00 PM on January 30, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
So, at least in the mid-90s, it was easy to jam up a phone switchboard.
posted by dfriedman at 4:53 PM on January 29, 2011