So for those of you keeping track at home:

• Indian firm Aiplex announced that they were launching Distribute Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks against The Pirate Bay. (the attack)
• The collective wisdom (Anonymous) of the Internet decided that in turn it would DDoS Aiplex, the MPAA, the RIAA, and their international counterparts in Operation Payback. (the counter-attack)
• Somebody has DDoS’ed the sites coordinating the attacks. (the counter-counter-attack)
• I’m popping up some popcorn to wait for the counter-counter-counter-attack and to watch the backscatter.

May we all live in interesting times, to say the least.  Some random thoughts I’m having about the DDoS campaigns:

• If people hate you enough to show up with signs outside your office to protest, they hate you enough to flood your network.
• Activist/vigilante/mob rule/protest has evolved to a very viable DDoS platform using a wide variety of operating systems.
• The DDoS campaign in 2008 against the Church of Scientology was called off by activist leaders, so now we’re seeing the unbridled fury of the Intertubez unleashed.
• On the tools side of things, I’ve seen some good development and some really creative methods to let non-technical folks to participate in the DDoS.
• Coordinating an activist army seems like the weak point in the model.

• Keeping Up With the DDoS Kids
• DDoS and Elections
• DojoCon DDoS Video
• The Rise of the Slow Denial of Service
• Apache Killer Effects on Target