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Whirlpool hit by DDoS attack

User forum Whirlpool was hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack last night, according to the site's hosting provider BulletProof Networks.
Written by Suzanne Tindal, Contributor

User forum Whirlpool was hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack last night, according to the site's hosting provider BulletProof Networks.

Although BulletProof Networks chief operating officer (COO) Lorenzo Modesto first said that Whirlpool was the only one of its customers to be affected by the attack, he said later that its public and private managed cloud customers were experiencing intermittent degraded network performance also.

"BulletProof customers have been kept in the loop throughout (per our standard procedures)," Modesto said.

Modesto added that BulletProof had discussed the issue with Whirlpool, resulting in the site being offline last night while the provider gathered more information. The site is back online this morning.

"We made the decision to bring Whirlpool back online in the early hours of this morning through one of our international [content distribution network points of presence] that are usually used to deliver local high-speed content to the offshore users of customers like Movember," Modesto said.

"We're continuing the forensics just in case they're needed and are keeping an eye Whirlpool," he added.

The attack had come from servers in the US and Korea, according to BulletProof.

"We've also been able to record server addresses and other relevant details and have escalated the source servers to the relevant providers in Korea and the US," he said. "If we need to, we'll pass all details onto the [Australian Federal Police] with whom we've built a good relationship, but we'll see how this pans out for the moment.".

This has not been the first DDoS attack to hit the popular site. Last June it experienced ten hours of downtime from a DDoS attack.

BulletProof Networks had also collected internet protocol addresses from that attack, but decided not to prosecute as a "sign of good will", saying that DDoS was recognised more as a protest than a crime.

However, not all DDoS perpetrators have received the same treatment in the past. Recently Steven Slayo, who was part of the anonymous band which launched attacks against government sites last year over the government's planned mandatory internet service provider level internet filter was taken to court over his actions.

He pleaded guilty, but escaped criminal conviction because the magistrate deemed him an "intelligent and gifted student whose future would be damaged by a criminal record".

ZDNet Australia contacted Whirlpool founder Simon Wright for comment, but had not received a response at the time of publication.

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