Soundcloud was attacked yesterday

[canefire]

Did anyone notice that Soundcloud was down yesterday? They sent out a message that they were the victims of a DDoS attack.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are becoming more and more popular. For those that don't know it happens when a large number of people go to a website at the small exact time. Literally clicking [ENTER] at the same time to access the site and then the server crashes. ANONYMOUS the hacker collective is famous for doing this.
Interestingly enough in legal circles there is a debate about this electronic freedom of assembly. In the USA it is a right of the citizenry to freely assemble and protest peacefully. Some theorists are saying that DDoS is similar to 1000 people walking into a bank that can only hold 300 people. Such large numbers would shut down the bank because no one could move. Or it is akin to people protesting (as many are doing right now on Wall Street). There are specific legal consequences to some forms of DDoS but it is not all worked out yet. Some DDoS attacks will land a perpetrator in prison. However the question remains whether telling or organizing one million people to hit hit enter on a web address is criminal or not. Criminal law always weighs mens rea(guilty mind) and actus reus(guilty act).
In any case a great site like SoundCloud which I go to all the time was attacked...not cool. This is the world we live in now.
Cheers,
ian

[Ill Green]

Had no idea it was work of hackers. I remember them being down but I thought it was due to upgrading.

Seems like every site wants you to upgrade your computer in order to access their site now. Thats another trend.