from Hacker News

DDoS attack protection for at-risk public interest websites

by backslash on 6/12/14, 4:34 PM with 18 comments

  • by troels on 6/12/14, 5:38 PM

    We have seen a number of high profile sites being subjected to extortion via ddos. I wonder how many big companies have been paying up and kept silent about it. I also wonder how hard it would be to hire some broad shouldered guys to go and pay the extorter (extortioner?) a not-so-friendly visit, considering how inefficient law enforcement appears to be in this regard.

  • by spenvo on 6/12/14, 6:48 PM

    > There is no cost to participate in Project Galileo — it’s free. CloudFlare will not publicly announce involvement in Project Galileo without permission.

    > Becoming part of Project Galileo is quick. On average, participants are up and running within a couple of hours; however, set up time ranges from 15 minutes to a couple of days.

    > CloudFlare does not cap its DDoS mitigation service. CloudFlare has experience defending against some of the largest DDoS attacks on record. We will keep your website online.

    The web is fragile in so many ways... But it's worse: the perpetrators of online attacks are (as good as) anonymous -- so this charitable initiative should be lauded for the load it's carrying.

    Pun intended.

  • by piemonkey on 6/12/14, 5:05 PM

    I'm personally shocked by how much power a DDoS has to potentially sway public opinion and influence the world at large. A few individuals have a hugely disproportionate voice in our public media by nature of the fact that they can control what other websites say through these attacks.

    Is there any progress on infrastructure improvements that could potentially improve this current state of affairs? Is our only solution for benevolent companies like Cloudflare to offer their blanket of protection? I guess I'm asking, who will guard the guards?

  • by brettfarrow on 6/12/14, 6:51 PM

    What about sites involving religion? I imagine there is a need or will be a need for minority groups (whether pro or anti-religion) in various developing nations, but it's not mentioned on the project page at all.

  • by nullc on 6/12/14, 6:06 PM

    Well, the NSA needed something to make up for the reduced cooperation of service providers post-snowden…