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SlideShare getting disrupted by massive DDOS attacks
| Tags: DDOS, slideshare |
Just wanted to drop a quick note here that SlideShare is being hit by DDOS attacks. In fact, this has been happening since last week, and the website has been off-air intermittently during this period. We had been debating internally, whether or not to go public with what’s happening behind the scenes. We decided to come clean as we owe an explanation to our users for our recent outages. Techcrunch broke the story today and the post captures the events fairly well. As one can make out, their seems to be a highly orchestrated attempt to punish the website for having content, that in our opinion is well within the rights of free speech of our users, and does not violate our TOS in any way. Having experienced this first-hand, I can add (to whatever TechCrunch has reported) that all this appears to be part of a well oiled machinery to control internet content. The repeated surreptitious attempts to coax the passwords with obviously untrue stories, the daily dose of take down notices, email spoofing, calling on the office telephone with a threatening demand for the account credentials!
Frankly, given our current traction and focus, we were under-prepared for this kind of an incident, so it has come as a rude shock. But we are getting back to speed (although the site is again experiencing problems as I write this blogpost) and getting prepared for further problems… stay tuned…. will keep you posted.
Update: Here’s a traffic snapshot of the first DDOS attack on SlideShare and the spike it caused. As you can notice, this was many times our normal bandwidth throughput and led to a complete choking of the incoming internet pipes at our webhost. In hindsight, we could have done a few things differently to have avoided this, or mitigated its effect, but that’s only now. Somebody emailed me asking for the technical details of the attack…my apologies, I don’t think I’ll be able to share everything on the blog.
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6 Comments | Add your own
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1. Sandeep | April 24th, 2008 at 8:33 am
I am sure Slideshare will not bow and will fight back with better preparation.. All the users of Slideshare will back it ..
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2. VikramAdith | April 24th, 2008 at 10:45 am
I read about this on TC, all I can say is ‘fight the good fight’!
I’m sure you guys will come through in the end. It would be great if some people could identify the mother organisation behind all this.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the Chinese government. 
Aren’t there people in the Chinese tech
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3. VikramAdith | April 24th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I read about this on TC, all I can say is ‘fight the good fight’!
I’m sure you guys will come through in the end. It would be great if some people could identify the mother organisation behind all this.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the Chinese government.
Aren’t there people in the Chinese tech scene who are rebuking their compatriots’ actions?
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4. Gaurav Gupta | April 24th, 2008 at 10:50 am
“as we owe an explanation to our users for our recent outages”… Now this makes sense to me 
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5. KapilMohan.com » DD… | April 24th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
[…] Here’s some coverage on Techcrunch explaining the turn of events and the reasons behind the DDOS. More coverage from Webyantra. […]
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6. DWiner | April 25th, 2008 at 12:43 am
I am an irated user at SlideShare. I have been facing problems right from day one of usage. Sometimes the slides load, sometime they don’t. Suddenly you face an error, nobody knows when, how and why. Frustrated, I tried deleting my account. Guess what, there was an error there too! Phew. First time I tried deleting my account, there was an error message saying “Amisha slipped.” Second time it was “Vidya”, third time it was “Lisa.” Ridiculous…for a second I was in doubt if they were running some drama company. I made a serious attack at the feedback section. Below is the conversation (my name and email are masked(xxx) for personal reasons):
I am in no mood to kid about your service Rashmi. Initially I was very fantasized about your very new innovative service, but that was short lived. Earlier today, I was trying to delete my account from the profiles page…nothing happens. Each time an error page loads up saying “Amisha just slipped…..”…a new lady each time I try. True, your server names are funny though, the service is really pathetic. Files don’t get deleted, refresh rate is slower than my granny, account also doesn’t get deleted. Till date I believed, Destruction is easier than construction….I changed now.
Rgds,
xxx.
—–Original Message—–
From: rashmi@slideshare.net
Sent: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:05:08 -0700
To: xxx@xxx.com
Subject: Re: [SlideShare] Feedback : All your servers slipped…???
Hi xxx,
Can you clarify what you mean? Are you facing any problems with the
site? I went on the site right now and it seems fine.
rashmi
PS: Or are you just kidding about our server names
xxx@xxx.com wrote:
>
> Hey, (xxx@xxx.com) has contacted us. Below is the message/bug:
>
>
>
> Is something adultery going on there in your server rooms? One by one,
> all your servers; Amisha, Vidya, Lisa are slipping off. Who’s that
> Mr.Dick who is so energetic?
>
> Page viewed before sending this feedback:
> http://www.slideshare.net/xxx
>
> User’s Browser Information:
> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13)
> Gecko/20080311 Firefox/2.0.0.13
>
—
o———-o———o————o
Rashmi Sinha
CEO, Slideshare
phone: 650 564 0000
www.slideshare.net
blog: www.rashmisinha.com
o——-o——-o——o—-o—-o
I guess they only reply to suggestions and +ve feedback but seldom come back on -ve feedback or complaints.
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Amit Ranjan is a cofounder of SlideShare. Based out of N. Delhi, he is a prime mover on the Indian tech startup circuit. His professional life is a mashup of disparate roles- startup guy, blogger, podcaster, product manager & tech entrepreneur. He closely tracks the Indian consumer internet space...more
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