Cyber Attack.

[Carehn]

Normaly i donate late in the day on the money bomb days. Like 8 my time with some exceptions here and there.

Last money bomb i was off some where when the cyber attack hit. never seen it but came back and found out about it. Kinda freaked me out. And to be honest stopped me from donating anything on the day of the Bomb. I have sence then sent money in. This does not solve our problem. Money bombs are strategic for a number of reasons. One being the media and two being the excitement and chance of donating more.

I donate more the bigger the money bomb is because im hyped to see that others value freedom as I do. This was stifled by the cyber attack.

I didn't donate on the day of the bomb because im not about to give my #s out to a site that just said it was being attacked by hackers.. DUH!!!

This campaign has energy not seen in our lifetime. If you want the hype and attention of a money bomb then you best get your security down.

Now Im not one to talk as the guy in charge. I don't even know where my enter button is on my computer, but i do know what im talking about as a consumer and the campaign site took and epic fail the likes no one will ever be able to calculate.

Im only one guy that didn't donate that day. I bet i represent 100 thousand more. and think of the multiplier those donations could have had on other people had we made 2 million that day.

I love the campaign and the site and this forum but i felt we needed someone to say...


"Get your shit together next time. Thousands are trusting you with card #s. This is the real deal man."

[Nate-ForLiberty]

good luck :(

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

Cyber attack =/= hacking. It was just kiddies doing a DDOS.

[MJU1983]

It wasn't a hack on the https...it was just a ddos on the main page. I actually made a donation BECAUSE of the "attack".

[gerryb]

"Get your shit together next time. Thousands are trusting you with card #s. This is the real deal man."

Understand the threat before you tell them to get their shit together.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, all of the major sites have been taken down by the same style "attack". No "hacking" is required and no ones data was ever at risk. All that's needed is a large amount of zombie computers to use up all of the resources of the hosted site. Any 14 year old with a little knowledge can pull off the same stunt.

[bluesc]

It wasn't a threat to security. It was just a DDOS attack, which has happened to many major sites that deal with many, many more card #s than the campaign will ever deal with.

Trust me, your donations are secure.

[Carehn]

It wasn't a hack on the https...it was just a ddos on the main page. I actually made a donation BECAUSE of the "attack".

How are people like me suppose to know what your even talking about? DDOS to me means don't enter your efen card #s... Do you see where I am coming from?

[MJU1983]

How are people like me suppose to know what your even talking about? DDOS to me means don't enter your efen card #s... Do you see where I am coming from?

I guess... I've just been using computers my whole life so I didn't see it as a "big deal".

The real question is - have you donated the money yet? :)

[Inkblots]

How are people like me suppose to know what your even talking about? DDOS to me means don't enter your efen card #s... Do you see where I am coming from?

DDoS means distributed denial of service. In other words, a large group of people, or, more likely, a single hacker with access to a botnet, have a large number of computers bombard the targeted webserver with such a large number of communications requests that the server capacity is exceeded, and legitimate users can't access the site. It can make a website unavailable, but there's no risk to anyone's data. So, no, DDoS doesn't mean "don't enter your efen card #s", it just means, "you might not be able to get to the site to enter your efen card #s". Get it?

[PastaRocket848]

What he said. DDOS is not "hacking" and doesn't give anyone elevated access to anything.

[Carehn]

I guess... I've just been using computers my whole life so I didn't see it as a "big deal".

The real question is - have you donated the money yet? :)

Yes just held of a day. But do you see how this could have been more effective?

[Carehn]

What he said. DDOS is not "hacking" and doesn't give anyone elevated access to anything.

Ok. So go back in time and tell that to all the people who held off donating because of it.

Option one is notify every person that could possible donate of all the non threatening cyber attack things.

Option two is don't let it happen.

Both work. I don't care what is used. Option two seems more efficient to me, but i could be wrong.

[MJU1983]

Yes just held of a day. But do you see how this could have been more effective?

I believe it was the best Money Bomb so far this campaign. There is nothing to prevent these types of attacks. If you could, I'd imagine that they wouldn't be so common, especially for large companies and governments. Perhaps they can let everyone know that nothing was compromised but I don't think it's worth giving any more attention to this, possibly inviting future attacks.

[Carehn]

I believe it was the best Money Bomb so far this campaign. There is nothing to prevent these types of attacks. If you could, I'd imagine that they wouldn't be so common, especially for large companies and governments. Perhaps they can let everyone know that nothing was compromised but I don't think it's worth giving any more attention to this, possibly inviting future attacks.

If there is no way to prevent it then you are right. Give no more attention and next time put out that in no way has security been compromised. Just know that its the guy with the dollar that makes the dissition and he may not know or care what is going down..

you don't walk into walmart when it looks chaotic and mobs of people are running about. Coming out on money bomb day yelling about a cyber attack turned me off and I'm the one with the cash. Not good advertising.

[LinuxJedi]

Think of it this way... imagine that you take orders for people at a call center. People call you, and give you their credit card numbers over the phone to place an order for something.

Then one day, some jerks decide to all call you at once... even though they don't want to buy anything. You pick up a line, and you hear... nothing... "Hello? Anyone there?" Nope. So you hang up. Next call, same thing... nobody is on the other end. This is basically what a DDOS is. Lots and lots of people tie up the "lines". Sometimes a legitimate order comes through, but most of your time is spent waiting on the deadbeats. So much time that you never actually get a legitimate person anymore...

This is exactly what happened. At no time was any information ever compromised, instead.... the server got overwhelmed with people requesting things. A server can handle "normal traffic"... but if you suddenly get 1000X that amount... or 1000000X that amount, it just can't handle it... it slows down to the point of being unusable. Hopefully with this analogy you can understand that this was an inconvenience, but there was never a real security issue. If someone called you at a call center, and said "what are the credit card numbers of your customers", you would tell them off... or report them. Similarly, just because the server is getting overwhelmed with requests does not mean it will magically give out confidential information... it will just get overloaded.

There is no real defense from this type of attack... it's like the cold war... the best you can do is build up so many servers that nobody can take you down (Amazon does this)... but the reality is you still can be crippled if someone has more servers than you do... hopefully this makes sense?

[Patriot123]

I will admit, it was a little silly of them to go and announce it to the world, that they were "cyber attacked." Not the wisest decision. If they were going to, they should have announced it after the moneybomb while reassuring people that everything is fine. Even then it's a bit iffy.

[LinuxJedi]

It would be obvious to anyone with experience in these things what was happening... the person doing the attacking knows they are attacking... the innocent users get an explanation... so I see no reason to not just come forward with what was going on. Pretending that there is nothing wrong happens quite a bit, and this is something that hopefully this campaign can fix :-)

Also you should realize that these attacks are pretty common... it may not have even been intentionally directed at the site. You cannot have both a semi-anonymous Internet, and a "safe" Internet where these attacks do not take place. As previously mentioned, also, these attacks are not sophisticated... nothing to really worry about except a minor inconvenience.

[TheViper]

Ok. So go back in time and tell that to all the people who held off donating because of it.

Option one is notify every person that could possible donate of all the non threatening cyber attack things.

Option two is don't let it happen.

Both work. I don't care what is used. Option two seems more efficient to me, but i could be wrong.
While 2 sounds more efficient, preventing DDoS attacks isn't easy.

Take the telephone call analogy for example. When 1 person calls you, not that hard to handle it. When 1,000 people try to call you, circuits get overloaded. How can you really prevent 1,000 people (or automated telephone systems) from calling you at once?

Websites reside on a single point of entry called an IP address (just like your single telephone number). You can send them all to voicemail with the phone and similarly you can hold off load on a server (ever see a website say "server is too busy"?) but that doesn't do anything to help legit people trying to access the site to donate.

[Matt Collins]

I have checked with the RP 2012 web team and I can assure you that no data was compromised in the Denial of Service attack on Saturday. Everyone's personal information is still and always was safe. The RonPaul2012.com website had a Denial of Service attack and the spike in requests that occurred when the site was down compounded the issues when trying to bring it back up. Steps have been implemented to help mitigate this type of denial of service attack in the future.

[Carehn]

I have checked with the RP 2012 web team and I can assure you that no data was compromised in the Denial of Service attack on Saturday. Everyone's personal information is still and always was safe. The RonPaul2012.com website had a Denial of Service attack and the spike in requests that occurred when the site was down compounded the issues when trying to bring it back up. Steps have been implemented to help mitigate this type of denial of service attack in the future.
Thank you.
If there is a next time see if they will assure people like me that no one is going to get my card numbers.

[Corpsman4Liberty]

I'm really curious as to who would have done a DDOS attack. It's usually ANON who is famous for these things but I have an extremely hard time seeing them perform an attack on Ron Paul when you consider that many of the things Ron Paul stands for, ANON stands for. Granted, ANON is quite extreme but they are definitely more along the lines of what Ron is talking about and not the on the side of the other candidates.

Interesting stuff nonetheless.

[PastaRocket848]

id be trying like hell to find out. imagine if that traced back to the RNC... oh boy would that be some fireworks.

[HOLLYWOOD]

Denial Of Service attacks are what we call PING of Death. Simple clusters of PINGS took down Yahoo for 3 hours back in 2000. The denial of service attack employs a relatively simple concept: just sending bogus packets from a remote location to IP routers where they collect and eventually plug up a pipe and bandwidth to the point of an Internet gridlock/traffic jam.

There's applications and routers today that can detect such saturations and either isolate the general IP locations causing the DoS.

[PaulConventionWV]

How are people like me suppose to know what your even talking about? DDOS to me means don't enter your efen card #s... Do you see where I am coming from?

Uh, no. Can we be reasonable for a minute and not try to assume the stupid mentality? I really don't think that works.

[PaulConventionWV]

Ok. So go back in time and tell that to all the people who held off donating because of it.

Option one is notify every person that could possible donate of all the non threatening cyber attack things.

Option two is don't let it happen.

Both work. I don't care what is used. Option two seems more efficient to me, but i could be wrong.

Don't you get it? It can't be prevented. It happens to every major site. Stop acting like an ignoramus and promote reasonable thought, for God's sake!

[PastaRocket848]

that's not true. there are steps that can be taken to limit the potential of a DDOS attack. the problem is that most of them have other performance and/or cost drawbacks. either way it's nothing to worry about. they can't stop us. if they bring it down for 4 hours we just donate 4 hours later. no big concern...

[Carehn]

Don't you get it? It can't be prevented. It happens to every major site. Stop acting like an ignoramus and promote reasonable thought, for God's sake!
That's not very nice.