back to article Botnet army flicks 'off' switch at UK crime agency website

The UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency's website has been taken offline following a DDoS attack that started last night and is still going on. SOCA decided to take the site down itself around 10pm last night to stop the distributed denial of service attack from bothering other connected websites. "We took the site off …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To misquote Oscar Wilde

    DDoS is the virtue of the vicious

  2. Chris Miller

    More skiddies spraying their virtual graffiti. Best ignored.

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Pirate

      Not ignored.

      Just track them back to their basements, watch them and separate the muppets from the puppetmasters, then get those skiddies to grass on the real hax0rs. In the meantime, I'm sure this means another botnet will be taken down and the skiddies will have to build themselves a new one. TBH, what a waste of a botnet.

  3. Jolyon Ralph

    Home office biometric systems down today too

    Huge biometric system failure in Lunar House. Lots of frustrated people having to rebook appointments.

    1. Sir Cosmo Bonsor

      Re: Home office biometric systems down today too

      This is relevant why?

  4. david 63

    Do tell again...

    ...you are going to protect the olympics if you can't keep one little website safe?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Do tell again...

      hell yeah!

      We are putting missiles and stuff on roofs.

      Sure it will spray hot metal over the fair folk of London, but on the plus side it will raise the "blitz" spirit that has been missing of late.

      As soon as GCHQ gives us the DDOSers addresses we are pressing FIRE!

      whats that? Spoofed addresses?

      Oh Bugger!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Do tell again...

      Yeah because an information site really need millions of pounds of resources thrown at it.

    3. Ben Tasker
      FAIL

      Re: Do tell again...

      The word priorities comes to mind, I'm sure they could fend off a DDoS, but given that it's simply a public facing site, is it worth the cost when there's no real harm done by switching off for a while?

      Olympics on the other hand have cost a fuck-ton of money, and it'd be more than a little embarrassing were something to go wrong. Could also bugger international relations if there's even a sniff of incompetence, so they'll happily throw a few more fuck-tons at it just to be sure.

      Given the paltry content on their site, I'd expect that people would start complaining if they said "We fended off a massive DDoS at a cost of £xxxxxx to the taxpayer", and quite rightly so IMHO

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Devil

        Re: Do tell again...

        "fuck-ton"

        This a new unit of measure that we have previously missed? I am sorely vexed that El Reg have failed to report on this one so far and I have to find this in the wild.

        How many Sheep Baas to one of them then?

        1. JulianB

          Re: Do tell again...

          And how many does it take to fill:

          a) an Olympic sized swimming pool

          b) Wales?

        2. Dave 62
          Boffin

          Re: Do tell again...

          I'm an engineer and can confirm that both imperial and metric fuck-tons have been widely used units of measurement since time immemorial, though recently the fucket-load has gained popularity due to it's intuitive nature and compatibility with meme culture (e.g. "I has a fucket").

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Holmes

            Re: Do tell again...

            So what do we measure the "Mememosity" of a meme in then?

            So if Lol Cats are 100% of the scale, and Fenton is 60 % of that scale, what should we name that?

            Since Fuck-tons are obviously taken, I will suggest "M0rts" for obvious reasons, Should this be exponential? And should it also apply to the geekiness of something? I think we are at the cusp of something important here.

            Like stating the public over reaction to something in the media should be given in the scale of "D.M."s (Daily Mails)

            1. Steven Roper
              Thumb Up

              Re: Public overreaction in Daily Mails

              The unit you refer to should actually be in microDailyMails (μDMs) because, just as 1 c is the maximum possible speed of sheep in a vacuum, 1 DailyMail is the maximum possible amount of public overreaction to any conceivable event.

              Therefore, where μDM = any possible amount of public overreaction, the range is 0 < μDM < 1. Note that zero is impossible to achieve because there is always some public overreaction; likewise 1 is impossible to achieve (except in the pages of the Daily Mail itself) because total public overreaction (100% of the population) would result in the total collapse of civilisation past the Daily Mail Event Horizon (otherwise known as the Daily Mail comments pages.)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who gains?

    They probably did it to themselves.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Or maybe someone just crashed the site (as in an incompetent admin) and they are just blamming it on DDoS.

    Naa, would never happen

    1. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects
      FAIL

      Besides, if they really wanted to get the information out, all they need to do is to leave a CD on a bus -like usual.

  7. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    "not a security risk to the organisation"

    Indeed not.

    That would be the person whose bag got snatched in Latin America.

    The one with the memory stick full of the details of their Latin American contacts in the region.

    Data security.

    They've heard of it.*

    *Planned lead agency for the Blair government's Interception Modernization Programme.

  8. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Devil

    Lets hope

    one of the skiddies is american

    Then we can try extraditing him with f*** all evidence.... well it works the other way.....

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Lets hope

      The large amount of taxpayers' money being wasted with Gary Mckinnon's rediculous attempts to dodge justice would seem to show just how silly that post was.

      1. Fibbles

        Re: Lets hope

        Gary McKinnon got caught doing something he shouldn't have, we can all agree on that. I wouldn't describe what he's trying to dodge as 'justice' though...

        1. TeeCee Gold badge

          Re: Lets hope

          Well, when he gets there and we get to find out how that goes, then we can pass judgement on the fairness of it.

          Everything to date on that subject has been nothing but speculative bullshit based on "worst case" scenarios.

          1. The First Dave
            Headmaster

            Re: Lets hope

            I think that most of us are capable of working out that if the Plod in Blighty don't want to prosecute, over an incident that happened in Blighty, then it is patently unfair that he be dragged off to any foreign country - in most other cases this is known as "rendition".

  9. mike panero

    I am a big cheese at soca

    I know just before the BIG EVENT I will send some shit down the line and see how those fuck wits cope

    "Jensen, my office monday morning "

    "but sir its a bank holiday!"

    1. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects
      FAIL

      Re: I am a big cheese at soca

      It's always bank holiday fool.

      Even when they are broke they still get paid silleemunee.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Send Gary and the rest to the slammer

    All hackers and DDoS kiddies belong in prison where they will get an education.

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