#prevent DDoS attacks

[diagnozabam]

Cel mai mare atac DDoS din istorie: 5.6 Tbps – Escaladarea amenințărilor cibernetice în 2024

Pe 29 octombrie 2024, a fost înregistrat cel mai mare atac DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) din istorie, atingând un volum impresionant de 5.6 Tbps. Lansat de o variantă a infamului botnet Mirai, atacul a vizat un furnizor de servicii Internet (ISP) din Asia de Est și a durat doar 80 de secunde. Acest incident marchează un nou prag în evoluția atacurilor cibernetice, subliniind complexitatea…

[ao3org]

We've temporarily disabled the ability to request a new account invitation as a preventative measure due to a spam attack. If you already have an invitation, you can still use it! However, anyone currently in the queue will not receive an invitation until we turn it back on.

Additionally, we have temporarily disabled the form on the Technical Support & Feedback page and taken the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports page offline. Anyone attempting to access the Policy Questions & Abuse Reports will receive an error page about being blocked from archiveofourown.org, but don't panic -- this is not the case! It's just the default error displayed by Cloudflare. You can continue to access the rest of the site as normal.

Lastly, the Organization for Transformative Works' donation page -- which is hosted by a third party provider -- is currently offline due to a DDoS attack. This is the only donation form the OTW uses, so please be cautious of scammers impersonating AO3 or the OTW to solicit donations. We are unable to take them at this time.

July 11, 2023 - 23:50 UTC

[digitalcreationsllc]

Logic Flaws Let Attackers Bypass Cloudflare's Firewall and DDoS Protection

The effectiveness of Cloudflare’s Firewall and DDoS prevention has been proven to be compromised by an attack technique that takes the use of logical vulnerabilities in cross-tenant security policies. This finding has sparked worries about possible vulnerabilities that could damage the security company’s clients. How Does the Cloudflare Attack Work? The attack only requires the creation of a free…

[noob2networking]

Firewall Friday: Defending Against DDoS Attacks - How to Keep Your Network Safe

Welcome to Firewall Friday, where we dive into the world of DDoS attacks and equip you with the knowledge to safeguard your network against these digital bullies. But don’t worry, we won’t let these troublemakers ruin our Friday vibes. Instead, we’ll tackle the topic with a humorous tone, using analogies and emojis to make it easy for even the most novice readers to understand. So, put on your…

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Matt Wuerker. Politico

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 11, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Mar 12, 2025

The stock market continued to fall today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 478 points, or 1.14%; the S&P 500 fell almost 0.8%; and the Nasdaq Composite fell almost 0.2%. The S&P 500 briefly held its own in trading today, but then Trump announced on his social media platform that he was going to double the tariffs on steel and aluminum from the new 25% rates to a 50% rate on Canada and might increase tariffs to “permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada.”

Stocks fell again.

Unable to admit that he might be wrong, President Donald Trump is doubling down on the policies that are crashing the economy. In addition to his tariff threats, he also reiterated that “the only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” an outrageous position that he suddenly began to advance after the 2024 presidential election and which has Canadians so furious they are boycotting U.S. goods and booing the Star-Spangled Banner.

More than 100 top business leaders met with Trump today to urge him to stop destabilizing what had been a booming economy with his on-again-off-again tariffs. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, told Jeff Stein and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post that in private, “[b]usiness leaders, CEOs and COOs are nervous, bordering on unnerved, by the policies that are being implemented, how they’re being implemented and what the fallout is. There’s overwhelming uncertainty and increasing discomfort with how policy is being implemented.”

The extreme unpredictability means that no one knows where or how to invest. Market strategist Art Hogan told CNN’s Matt Egan, “This market is just blatantly sick and tired of the back and forth on trade policy.” Yesterday, Delta Air Lines cut its forecasts for its first-quarter revenue and profits by half, a sign of weakening corporate and consumer confidence and concerns about the safety of air travel. Today, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines cut their forecasts, and American Airlines forecast a first-quarter loss.

When he talked to reporters, Trump reasserted that he intends to do what he wants regardless of the business leaders’ input. “Markets are going to go up and they’re going to go down, but you know what, we have to rebuild our country. Long-term what I’m doing is making our country strong again.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt advised, “If people are looking for certainty, they should look at the record of this president.”

Not everyone will find that suggestion comforting.

Trump backed off on his threat to raise the tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum to 50%, but went ahead with his threat to place 25% tariffs on all imported steel and aluminum products. Those tariffs took effect at midnight.

In the face of his own troubles, Trump’s sidekick billionaire Elon Musk is also escalating his destructive behavior. Yesterday Musk’s social media platform X underwent three separate outages that spanned more than six hours. Lily Jamali and Liv McMahon of the BBC reported that Oxford professor Ciaran Martin, former head of the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Center, said that the outages appear to have been an attack called a “distributed denial of service,” or DDoS, attack. This is an old technique in which hackers flood a server to prevent authentic users from reaching a website.

"I can't think of a company of the size and standing internationally of X that's fallen over to a DDoS attack for a very long time," Martin said. The outage "doesn't reflect well on their cyber security." Without any evidence, Musk blamed hackers in Ukraine for the outages, an accusation Martin called “pretty much garbage.”

Four days ago, another of Musk’s SpaceX rockets exploded after takeoff, and now SpaceX’s Starlink internet service is facing headwinds. In February, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim canceled his collaborations with Starlink after growing tensions with Musk culminated with Musk alleging on X that Slim is tied to organized crime. The loss of that deal cost Musk about $7 billion in the short term, but more in the long term as Slim will work with European and Chinese companies in 25 Latin American countries rather than Starlink. Slim has said he would invest $22 billion in those projects over the next three years.

Also in February, after U.S. negotiators threatened to cut Ukraine’s access to the 42,000 Starlink terminals that supply information to the front lines, the European Commission began to look for either government or commercial alternatives. The European Commission is made up of a college of commissioners from each of the 27 European Union countries. It acts as the main executive branch of the European Union.

On Sunday, Musk posted: “[M]y Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.” Poland pays for about half the Starlink terminals in Ukraine, about $50 million a year. Poland’s minister of foreign affairs, Radosław Sikorski, responded that “if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.” “Be quiet, small man,” Musk replied. “You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.”

After all the tariff drama with Canada, last week Ontario also cancelled a deal it had with Starlink.

But perhaps the biggest hit Musk has taken lately is over his Tesla car brand. On February 6, Musk’s younger brother Kimbal, who sits on Tesla’s board, sold more than $27 million worth of shares in the company. Tesla chair Robyn Denholm sold about $43 million worth of Tesla stock in February and recently sold another $33 million. Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja has sold $8 million worth over the past 90 days. Yesterday, board member James Murdoch sold just over $13 million worth of stock.

Fred Lambert of Electrek, which follows the news about electric vehicles and Tesla, noted that Tesla stock dropped 15% yesterday, “down more than 50% from its all-time high just a few months ago.” “Tesla insiders are unloading,” he concluded.

Tesla sales are dropping across the globe owing to the unpopularity of Musk’s antics, along with the cuts and data breaches from his “Department of Government Efficiency.” Protesters have been gathering at Tesla dealerships to express their dismay. While the protests have been peaceful, as Chris Isidore of CNN reports, there have also been reports of vandalism. Tesla owners are facing ridicule as protesters take out their anger toward Musk on his customers, and at least one competitor is working to lure consumers away from Musk’s brand by offering a discount to Tesla owners.

Trump has jumped to Musk’s defense, posting just after midnight this morning that “Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for. They tried to do it to me at the 2024 Presidential Ballot Box, but how did that work out? In any event, I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American.”

Indeed, today Trump used the office of the presidency to bolster Musk’s business. Teslas were lined up at the White House, where Trump read from a Tesla sales pitch—photographer Andrew Harnik caught an image of his notes. And then the same man who gave a blanket pardon to those convicted of violent crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol called those protesting at Tesla dealerships “domestic terrorists” and promised that the government would make sure they “go through hell.”

Trump and Musk appear to have taken the downturn in their fortunes by becoming more aggressive. Martin Pengelly of The Guardian noted that in the middle of Monday’s stock market plunge, Trump posted or reposted more than 100 messages on his social media channel. All of them showed him in a positive light, including reminders of the 2004 first season of the television show The Apprentice, in which Trump starred: a golden moment in Trump’s past when his ratings were high and the audience seemed to believe he was a brilliant and powerful businessman.

Today, egged on by Musk, Trump pushed again to take over other countries. He told reporters: "When you take away that artificial line that looks like it was done with a ruler…and you look at that beautiful formation of Canada and the United States, there is no place anywhere in the world that looks like that…. And then if you add Greenland…that's pretty good."

The Trump administration also announced today it was cutting about half the employees in the Department of Education. The Senate confirmed Linda McMahon, who has little experience with education, to head the department on March 3 by a party-line vote. Shutting down the department "was the president's mandate—his directive to me," McMahon told Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham. McMahon assured Ingraham that existing grants and programs would not “fall through the cracks.”

But when Ingraham asked her what IDEA stood for—the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act—she wasn’t sure, although she knew it was “the programs for disabled and needs.” Ingraham knew what the acronym meant but assured McMahon that after 30 years on the job, she still didn’t know all the acronyms. McMahon replied: “This is my fifth day on the job and I’m really trying to learn them very quickly.”

Musk lashed out at Arizona senator Mark Kelly on social media yesterday, after Kelly posted pictures of his recent trip to Ukraine and discussed the history of Russia’s invasion, concluding “it’s important we stand with Ukraine.” Musk responded: “You are a traitor.”

Kelly, who was in the Navy for 25 years and flew 39 combat missions in the Gulf War before becoming an astronaut, responded: “Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mudwerks]

(via 'Garbage' to blame Ukraine for massive Twitter outage, experts say)

However, Ciaran Martin, professor at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government told the BBC that explanation was "wholly unconvincing" and "pretty much garbage."

Prof Martin - former head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre - says it looks as if Twitter was targeted by what's known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, where hackers flood a server with internet traffic to prevent users from connecting to a website.

"It's not that sophisticated - it's a very old technique," Mr Martin told Radio 4's Today programme.

"I can't think of a company of the size and standing internationally of Twitter that's fallen over to a DDoS attack for a very long time," he added.

He said the incident at Twitter "doesn't reflect well on their cyber security."

[mariacallous]

The anonymous image board 4chan has survived years of controversy. It weathered user and advertiser boycotts as well as damning accusations that it incubated hate speech that may have fueled mass shootings. Users have convened on 4chan to plan hacks like DDoS attacks, and conspiracy theories that festered on 4chan even reportedly inspired the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol. On Monday night and Tuesday, though, the platform faced its latest test after a series of outages led to speculation that the site had been hacked.

The core feature 4chan provides is public anonymity to post text and images, but the platform itself does collect information about users, such as their IP addresses. As a result, a breach of the website could represent a significant exposure of data that was intended to be private.

“4chan is an anonymous message board that enables often offensive and hateful content. The content leaked, if genuine, would remove some of the anonymity from 4chan administrators, moderators, and janitors,” says Ian Gray, director of analysis and research at the security firm Flashpoint. The image board’s billing as an “anonymous” platform may have given users a “false sense of security,” Gray says. “Some users may have registered their email addresses years ago when they were less aware or concerned about their operational security.”

Reports about the apparent hack began circulating after a previously banned board on 4chan briefly appeared online and the site was defaced with a message saying, “U GOT HACKED XD.” Subsequently, an online account on a rival forum known as Soyjak.party posted screenshots allegedly showing 4chan’s backend systems, plus a list of alleged 4chan administrator and moderator usernames, with associated email addresses. Following this post of 4chan administrator email addresses, Soyjak.party users started posting alleged doxes, including photos and personal information, of the accounts included in the leak.

WIRED has not been able to confirm whether the data is legitimate. A press email address associated with 4chan as well as two alleged administrator emails from the leaked data did not immediately respond to WIRED’s requests for comment on the hack and its validity. One of the site’s moderators said they believed the hack and leaks were real, according to a report by TechCrunch.

Rumors also started circulating on Tuesday that the breach is the result of 4chan running legacy, unpatched software that exposed the platform to attack. After a breach a decade ago, 4chan founder Christopher Poole, known online as “moot,” wrote in a blog post, “[We] have spent—and will continue to spend—dozens of hours poring over our software and systems to help mitigate and prevent future intrusions. We’re sorry it happened, and will do our best to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Emiliano De Cristofaro, a computer science and engineering professor at UC Riverside, who has researched the impact of 4chan on the web, says the ramifications could be large if the hack is confirmed.

“It seems true that 4chan hasn't been properly maintained and patched for years, which might indicate that a hack would have definitely been a possibility,” De Cristofaro says. “There might be some ‘high profile’ users exposed as moderators—traditionally, 4chan users hate them, so they might be targeted. It might be hard or at least painfully slow and costly for 4chan to recover from this, so we might really see the end of 4chan as we know it.”

Initial reports posted on Soyjak.party referencing a 4chan hack appeared to say that Soyjak.party members may have been involved in the attack. One post claimed that a hacker had been in 4chan’s systems “for over a year” and exposed personal information allegedly linked to 4chan users and administrators. And multiple screenshots posted on Soyjak.party appear to show someone accessing 4chan’s internal systems. These include images of someone with administrator access to a 4chan backend database, stats about users on various sections of 4chan, a page showing deleted posts and the IP addresses they were made from, as well as other internal documentation. Some reports also claim that hackers stole 4chan’s source code.

In recent years, 4chan has increasingly been on the radar of US government officials. The website has reportedly been kept online due in part to investment by a Japanese company. In June 2023, WIRED reported on internal 4chan documents that showed how the site’s policies shaped the highly toxic nature of the platform—including how moderators explicitly allow racism. In most cases, the documents showed, calls for violence on 4chan are not met with user bans.

“If the data is legitimate, information on members and posting could be useful for law enforcement investigations,” Flashpoint’s Gray says. “4chan has been around since at least 2003, which is extremely notable for any online service. Aside from the offensive and often extremist content, a lot of internet culture has originated from 4chan. If this is a death knell for 4chan, other services will likely fill its place. However, the effect of 4chan on the internet cannot be overstated.”

[anqelbean]

Reminder: this is not AO3 being down for server maintenance. This is a DDoS attack from a hate group name Anonymous Sudan. Their intentions were to make the site unavailable for its users because the "site is full of disgusting smuts and other LGBTQ and NSFW stuff" (their words).

Please do not try to open AO3, it is still under attack, do not go there until @/AO3_Status (on Twitter) or @ao3org (on Tumblr) says it's safe. It makes their job harder. Remember, these people are doing it for FREE.

For those that don't know what a DDoS attack is:

DDoS Attack or Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack is a cybercrime in which the attacker floods a server with internet traffic to prevent users from accessing connected online services and sites. (Source)

Flooding it with even more traffic makes the attack worse. Please be patient with the OTW. They are working very hard and Anonymous Sudan have stated they will attack continuously for up to 24 hours. Perhaps more.

These people are in no way affiliated with actual Anonymous from what I know.

Islamophobia is also not to be tolerated. These people are bigots because they're bigots, not because of their faith. Please call out any form of it you see.

IMPORTANT EDIT: The group is most likely Russian NOT Sudanese.

[cannedmelonart]

Donald Trump is trying to break the structure of the America government system by acting as he would if he were a dictator in order to stress test the system. He will flood the system to the point of overworking and gridlocking. He is committing a DDoS attack of the American system --

Definition:

A ping flood, also known as an ICMP flood, is a type of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in which an attacker overwhelms the targeted device or network with continuous request packets (pings). This can cause network congestion and prevent legitimate users from accessing network resources.

[endwithajadestrick]

Who Is Fucking In Star Wars? A Non-Comprehensive List

So in honor(?) of the DDoS attack on Ao3 preventing us all from mainlining slash fic, I've decided to go horny on main and list off my opinion about 3 traits of all Star Wars characters. Our beloved Galaxy Far Far Away is a usually (tragically) chaste place, which may lead us to ponder about our faves:

Do they even know what sex is?

Have they ever actually HAD sex?

Are they any good at it?

We will not be including characters who are minors in this list. Obviously. Judgements are based somewhat on the lore, but really more on vibes. Perhaps it goes without saying, this will be lightly NSFW.

This is probably gonna take a while and stop feeling like a good idea halfway through. Which of your exes does that describe? Let's Go!!!

Starting with the big three:

Han Solo

Always begin with an easy one.

Does he even know what sex is? Yes, unlike a surprising number of people in this galaxy, Han knows how to do the do.

Has he ever had sex before? Sure (but not as often as he wants you to think). Do you, uh . . . maybe wanna get out of here and come back to his ship? She's called the Millenium Falcon.

Is he good at sex? Look. It's not going to be good the first time. He's gonna keep insisting that he "knows what he's doing," but you wish he would just let you explain what you like. He needs to be girlbossed around a little bit. And it is mostly girls for him, though the occasional guy and non-binary being has mounted that loading ramp too. His bedroom does smell kind of funny.

Luke Skywalker

This one may be controversial for some people.

Does he know what sex is? Nope. Farm boy didn't go to schmool. Skool? Am I saying that right? There were no copies of Our Bodies, Our Selves lying around the rebellion base, and you better believe the Sacred Jedi Texts did not include some kind of version of the Space Kama Sutra. Han wasn't gonna draw him a diagram either; that would be too embarrassing. This man is not learned in the pleasures of the flesh.

Has he ever had sex? Also no. He got into some light over-the-clothes action with Biggs Darklighter when they were teens, but nothing ever went any farther than that.

Is he good at sex? I'm sure a real earnest effort would be made, but we'll never know, will we. Because he DOES NOT KNOW what sex is.

Princess/General Leia Organa

Does she even know what sex is? Oh, absolutely. This woman was treated to an actual formal education. She probably even got a nice, progressive version of SexEd that talked about pleasure and consent and not just all the weird diseases you could get--assuming the Empire didn't nix that sort of thing on Alderaan, which, honestly, they might have.

Has she ever had sex? Of course. And despite being a princess, she's not that precious about courtship either. Casual flings are totally fine and normal.

Is she good at sex? Leia is mature but, like her hairstyles, can be a little tightly wound. Once you get over any initial awkwardness, though, it's sure to be a fun flirty time.

And this is Star Wars, so sooner or later we have to address--

Chewbacca

--the aliens of it all. Welcome, monster fuckers! It's not even weird in this universe!

Does he know what sex is? Chewy is canonically 234 years old as of TLJ, so I'm going to give this a definite yes. Also, he hangs out with Han Solo and all the doors in this universe appear to be panel-controlled. There are no door knobs to stick a sock on; he's SEEN some things.

Has he ever had sex? Again, 234 years old, and Chewy has never seemed like a wallflower. This is also a yes.

Is he good at it? Maz Kanata seems to think so? I don't pretend I have the predilections/imagination to get the appeal (though I honor those that do), but I'm gonna take a swing and say, yes, Chewbacca is a good lover. Solid stamina, surprisingly tender after-care.

Lando Calrissian

Does he know what sex is? Yes, and not just on a mechanical level. If anyone in this universe HAS read the Space Kama Sutra, it's Lando.

Has he ever had sex? He has. And he doesn't keep a list of all his past sexual partners because that would be crass. But he COULD tell you about each of them, names, dates, locations. But he won't. But he could.

Is he good at it? Surprisingly, yes! He may come across as a guy who is all talk, but Lando is an artist at heart and the democratically elected President of Consent. He has mood lighting set up and a tastefully curated playlist. The atmosphere is fun, the oral is enthusiastic. When you're done--wow!--there's a mini bar right near the bed. And would you like to borrow a silk robe?

Your magical evening will not prevent him from cheating you at cards later, though.

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Does he know what sex is? No. He learned once, but has since memory-holed the information. Otherwise he might accidentally experience some pleasure from the stick up his bum.

Has he ever had sex? Many beings have made valiant efforts to claim this beautiful man as a conquest. All have failed, but there was much exquisite yearning along the way.

Is he good at it? Hypothetically? Alas, my heart wants to say yes, but my head says no.

Padmé Amidala

Does she know what sex is? Look at this dress. This dress is a CHOICE, a ruthless tactical decision made by someone who definitely knows what sex is.

Has she ever had sex? Yes, but her taste in men--oh, honey.

Is she good at it? A pillow princess if there ever was one. You will be doing all the work.

Anakin Skywalker

Does he know what sex is? No.

Has he ever had sex? Yes.

Is he good at it? . . . and I know those answers seem contradictory, but it's true. This is a man who has had normal, consensual adult sex. However, baby boy's brain is full of more holes than a colander. He is dummy thick actually in the head region. He is incapable of retaining complex thoughts such as the nuances of sexuality.

That said, he is a creature of pure instinct and, like, yeah, the lovemaking is pretty hot.

Mace Windu

Does he know what sex is? Yes.

Has he ever had sex? No.

Is he good at it? If it ever happened, which it won't? No, and Mace is possibly the only Sammy J character for whom this holds true. It would be strictly procreative missionary. No fun allowed.

Yoda

Does he know what sex is? Yes, he is aware. Knowledge is this little frog man's burden; Yoda is too in touch with the Force, the life energy of the universe, not to know. He WOULD not know if he could, but he has had to settle for just ignoring the information.

Has he ever had sex? You know I am genuinely stumped on this one. On one hand, he is the perfect ascetic Jedi sage. On the other hand, a nine hundred year lifespan is a long time . . . anything could have happened to this lilliputian enigma.

Is he good at it? Size matters not.

The Mandalorian

Yeah I know his name is "Din Djarin." Shush.

Does he know what sex is? I'm pretty sure this guy thinks that babies are found, not made. He does not know what sex is.

Has he ever had sex? I don't care what season one implied about Mando and that toothsome twi'lek, it's never happened. The helmet doesn't come off and the trousers don't drop.

Is he good at it? And here's the tragedy of it all, right? Because we know that underneath that impenetrable layer of beskar lies such a man. I don't even care if he's an ace, as seems plausible. Just the chance to look him in the eye would mean worlds.

Finn

Does he know what sex is? Negative, Ghost Rider. It's not something the First Order teaches their child soldiers, and the Resistance, like the rebellion of old, has bigger fish to fry. Poe wants to explain it to him, but feels like he has a dog in that race and it wouldn't be right.

Has he ever had sex? Men, women, and other beings are lining up around the corner for a shot at this man, but he only has eyes for one woman, and she in turn may be legitimately the only person in the galaxy who does not pine for him. Hang in there, Finn! Maybe one day she'll become emotionally available.

Is he good at it? While we have seen Finn makes some selfish moves along his journey--mainly because of, y'know, all the trauma--he has done a lot of growing and is an essentially generous spirit. This gets a yes.

Rey Skywalker

Does she know what sex is? Not in either The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi, but before Rise of Skywalker Leia explained it to her. She's the future of the Jedi after all, and this is basic stuff, goddammit Luke!

Has she ever had sex? Hmm, what's that? Sorry, she's super busy right now with, like, destiny and stuff.

Is she good at it? Rey seems to pick most things up fairly quickly, so you have to imagine that would hold true for l'amour as well, except that she'll also be a bit of a try-hard. Do less, sweety. Really, it's fine.

Lightning Round

Asajj Ventress

Yes, yes, and it depends on the answer to one question: do you enjoy pain?

L3-37

It Works.

Cinta Kaz

Yes, yes, and not just good but so good it will politically radicalize you.

Karis Nemik

No, which is a shame because you know that he would have made sex-positive feminism and queer theory a huge part of his manifesto.

Count Dooku

Gay, and pulled legendary numbers of exquisite vintage ass across the galaxy. It's the real reason Sidious traded him in for simple, pussy-whipped Anakin. He just couldn't take it anymore.

Luthen Rael

Hope you like role-play.

Armitage Hux

Yes, it's true; this man has no dick.

Qi'ra

Yes, yes, and good but maybe in a dangerous way? Like drugs, it's possible that you--maybe even most people--could have a healthy, well-adjusted relationship to it. But there's a chance also that it will alter your brain chemistry, fundamentally shift your priorities, and ruin your life. The only way for sure to be safe is not to try it, not even once!

The Bendu

The One in the Middle. So in this case, would that be, like, the taint?

Reva Sevander

I mean, do you like it freaky? How freaky do you like it? There are levels to this sort of thing, and you, through no fault of your own, may not be ready for this ride.

Cassian Andor

Cassian Andor fucks.

The Armorer

I tried to get a read on this one, and all I picked up was radio static. We'll never know. We'll just never know.

Rose Tico

Rose appears naive at first, but she's actually quite worldly and will rock yours.

Bo-Katan Kryze

I daresay more than 2% of us want her to sit on our face. Ms. Sackoff was really lowballing it. Bo does not know what sex is, however, and is rarely in listening-mode, so that's a hurdle we'll have to overcome.

But it's more than 2%.

Poe Dameron

Yes, yes, and does it even matter? It would be an honor just to be considered, sir.

Hera Syndulla

Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets. Apparently what Lola wants is an inexperienced, sexually repressed Jedi hotty. In this way, she is the true queen of Star Wars fandom. Captain our ship, Hera!

And Finally:

Kylo Ren

I do not understand the hold this man has on some of you--which is fine; you don't need me to understand it. He does not know what sex is, he is so horny and angry all the time. And sure, maybe you CAN fix him by completing his education. Blessings, angels. Live your fantasy.

Just promise me you'll use protection? And I don't mean a condom, I mean body armor.

[supercorpbb]

Hello! Due to the DDoS attack on AO3 that has prevented our participants from uploading their works, we've extended the submission deadline to July 21st. We will continue to monitor the current situation and update you if any further adjustments are required.

On a related note, we'd just like to say that Archive Of Our Own is one of the most profound things to happen to fandom and fan expression since the birth of zines, and we at the Supercorp Big Bang would like to thank the AO3 staff for the tireless work they do to maintain and protect their site.

[beccasafan]

Did you see that AO3 said they are under a dos attack? I don't understand what that means? Help?

Ok, lemme see if I can break it down...

So, think of a drain. When the drain is unblocked, pouring in a little bit of water will drain quickly without a problem, right? That's the server at regular operation - AO3 is the drain, and the water is a user loading a page. And the drain can handle a handful of people pouring in a bit of water at the same time, just like a server can handle multiple people on the site at the same time.

Next, ya know how when new magazine cover photos come out or new merch is released and lots of people hit a site basically all at the same time and it's noticeably slower? That's a crowd of people each pouring a little bit of water down the drain at the same time. The drain is still working, but it can only handle a certain rate of volume before it starts to back up. It's still gonna fully drain, it's just gonna take a little bit longer. When the rush of people hitting a site causes it to go down - that's the sink filling up because it's like an entire bucket of water being poured in at once. The site is basically saying "hey, your mug of water didn't go down the drain in 30 seconds, so just...no page for you".

Still with me?

Ok, so DDOS stands for Distributed Denial Of Service. A DOS / Denial of Service attack would be someone pouring a 100-gallon aquarium worth of water down the drain all at once. The denial of service is flooding the drain so that if I come in and pour a mug of water down the drain, it's going to take a super long time to drain because of how backed up it is. A Distributed DOS attack takes it even further. Instead of just 1 person with their 100-gallon aquarium of water, now imagine it is 1000 people each with their aquarium. They all pour that into the sink at once and it's going to completely back up the drain and fill up the sink, it's just not gonna be a good time for that drain. The point of the DDOS attack is to completely overwhelm the server so that a normal user is denied service (getting the page they want on the website).

There's another way to level up a DDOS attack too. So far, the attackers have only been pouring water down the drain. It'll all go down the drain, even if it's eventually. But what if they didn't only pour water down the drain? What if they poured in rocks/pebbles/sand? That will actually clog the drain and prevent water from flowing through it. Taking it back to the AO3 website...normally when you do a search on AO3, you're searching for a few specific words, a specific pairing, and perhaps also a specific rating. It's just a small amount of data that you're sending to the server that it has to download, so it won't take the server long to download it. Now, imagine if you submitted the entire Bee movie script in the text search. That's a lot of text, and the server needs to download all that. It's just another way of overwhelming the server. Instead of it being overwhelmed with data where it just takes a bit longer, the DDOS attack is now intentionally sending bad data to the server to the point where it's not just slowing things down, it's actually clogging things up where water can't flow at all.

All that to say is that a Distributed Denial Of Service attack is when someone uses multiple/lots of machines to intentionally massively overwhelm a server with data so that it cannot serve regular users trying to access the site.

Ummmm, so yeah. This turned into a lot. Hopefully, it helped?

[average-transfem-robotgirl]

If you put a bot in a chastity cage, does that count as a ddos attack? ;3

A DDoS would be more likeee, being used by several people at oncee~!!!

A chastity cage is much more like,,uhmm, a firewall!! It’s a lock that prevents entry to some services!! Or maybe like,,mfmnngh, a ransomware? Where you need to provide something, usually money, to regain access to encrypted filess~!!

[vroomvroomcircuit]

james has made a full recovery after you suffocated him to save alex and now james seeks revenge. he has captured mick schumacher and is holding him in the williams basement. he has sent a ransom note to seb, which details that you, yes you, must bring him logan sargeant as a sacrifice in exchange for mick’s safe release. seb begs you to help mick, but he refuses to let logan be a sacrifice. to aid you, seb has given you a doorknob. how will you save mick and prevent logan from the clutches of james vowles?

Ohhh, a doorknob

The easiest way would be to Chuck it at Jim's head and give him a concussion and an open head wound. But we don't do easy here.

I recruit Seb to charm Jim with his German boy gleam, yapping about equality so much, it gives Jim a migraine. Small brains usually are overpowered like a network by a DDOS attack when you talk about big themes.

While Jim is fighting a headache and a German dad, I sneak into the basement and use the doorknob to open the... well... door and free Mick

In the meantime, Seb has charmed Jim's credit card away and we build a new team with his money to get Logan and Mick a seat on the grid with Seb and Liyah as dual team principals.

[cyber-sec]

Akamai Prevents Record-Breaking DDoS Attack on Major U.S. Customer

Source: https://www.akamai.com/blog/security/2024/sep/akamai-prevents-record-breaking-ddos-attack-major-us-customer