Sunday, October 7th 2007
American Department of Homeland Security DDoS' Itself
A simple blunder in an E-mail server's code recently caused the Department of Homeland Security to give itself a miniature DDoS attack. Here's the low-down on what happened: a reader of the DHS' daily Open Source Intelligence Report replied to the list address with a request for a change. The message quickly found itself E-mailed to all subscribers of the newsletters, which numbers in the thousands, for reasons unknown. Unfortunately, once those subscribers got the request, they also got the list of recipients. When the good subscribers tried to report this problem, the same problem happened to the server, and every subscriber quickly found themselves knee-deep in E-mails asking for an un-subscription. That's not the only E-mail passed around the DHS network, though. Subscribers also received requests to cease replying, urgent requests from the Department of Defense and DHS officials for recipients to "kindly stop now please," a "vote for me" political ad, job offers and updates on the local weather. All in all, the server sent, received, and otherwise handled 2.2 million E-mails over the course of an hour, causing a mini-DDoS. The problem is resolved now, and the DHS is ensuring that such a problem will never happen again.
Source:
EWeek
10 Comments on American Department of Homeland Security DDoS' Itself
If anything is added that actually pertains to the discussion, and is not a one word post, meant to bash any person or group, or is completely off topic it will stay.
There is a General Nonsense section, located here.
These gentlemen are supposed to be the crop of the crop. Shouldn't somebody feel concerned or was that question already answered long time ago.
In all due fairness, this sort of news is an invitation to everyone else out there to give the DHS just more trouble.
Furthermore, I don't see how else most people should react to news like this. As a kid, my father'd just scold me or wack me one if I'd ever do something so idiotic.
Sincerely
Ann Core
"such a problem will never happen again." Uh huh, right.
More like: We will make sure that any such future incidents will be quickly concealed from public eyes and covered up. Incidents that make us and our department look like incompetent overpaid 20th century assclowns.
:laugh:
On edit: OrbitzXT's post/reply was removed. Okay.
Oops, I forgot; the DHS, being a government agency, has magical computers that never crash and god-like programmers who are able to find and correct all logic errors whatsoever simply by looking at code. :rolleyes:
No, no one should be fired over this. Wow, thousands of people got a bunch of useless email one day. I've seen much worse problems.
They aren't trying to cover this up and stop the public from hearing about it. If that were true, we wouldn't be hearing about it.
I think everyone here is just looking for ways to convince themselves that they live in a corrupt nation. Why anyone would want to do that, I have no idea.
They can pay me to take care of this and Id only ask for 120k a year, 80k less than the guy they got doing it <G>
They have to be perfect with what they do -- the nation's security demands no less, wouldn't you say?
Also, lot's of things shouldn't happen. But they are. We die, we grow old, people get raped, kids get abused, guns are being fired in schools. We shouldn't accept these things, but they are happening nevertheless.