DDOS: from God with love

On hearing the news that web-sites of several atheist foundations/NGOs have become victims of severe DDoS attacks, I could only think about one thing: it would be quite hard to blame these attacks on either China or Russia. From ZDNet Australia: The websites of the Atheist Foundation of Australia and the Global Atheist Convention were ...

On hearing the news that web-sites of several atheist foundations/NGOs have become victims of severe DDoS attacks, I could only think about one thing: it would be quite hard to blame these attacks on either China or Russia. From ZDNet Australia:

On hearing the news that web-sites of several atheist foundations/NGOs have become victims of severe DDoS attacks, I could only think about one thing: it would be quite hard to blame these attacks on either China or Russia. From ZDNet Australia:

The websites of the Atheist Foundation of Australia and the Global Atheist Convention were knocked offline yesterday due to a sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

At the time of writing the Atheist Foundation’s site was still null routed with the Global Atheist Convention site saying that it does not have enough information to confirm the source or reason for the attacks. The site has also called the attacks "not just an attack on atheism, but an attack on freedom of speech".

So how long will it take for the paranoid cyberwarfare community to link God to those attacks?  I am particularly curious how Wall Street Journal would go about this one. I bet it’s going to be something along the lines of  "our undisclosed sources among former CIA agents reveal that God, acting via cybercriminal groups based in Russia and China, is engaging in acts of cyberwarfare. According to smart guys at CSIS, a prominent Washington think-tank, this may threaten the security of the US power grid and lead to Apocalypse. All because Obama hasn’t appointed the Cyber Czar yet".

 

 

Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Society Institute and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. He writes the Net Effect blog on ForeignPolicy.com

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