As I write this, GeekShed is suffering a large scale Denial of Service attack. It is expected that the attack is the result of a user being banned in the channel owned by Chris Pirillo. Following this ban, much flooding ensued. After this was quashed by #chris ops, a botnet was set on GeekShed. This was a relatively admirable botnet however it was fairly easily quashed by network staff.

Most of the servers that make up GeekShed are currently being bombarded with large volumes of ICMP and UDP traffic. Despite them being in data centres with large backbones and DDOS protection, they cannot withstand the volume of traffic being thrown at them and have buckled. Many of the servers have had to be null routed to prevent damage to other machines and customers. This is the second attack GeekShed has suffered as a result of someone being disgruntled at Chris Pirillo. Sadly, as Chris is currently now tucked up in bed and only offers the channel as a means for people to discuss tech related issues, this doesn’t affect him.

The people who are affected are the network staff who give their time and money to keep GeekShed running. The same network staff who donate their own servers for the good of GeekShed. The same network staff who are dragged out of bed at 4am to watch as their business sites crumble as a result of a misplaced attack.

It saddens me that someone would launch such an attack against a network of volunteers with such little cause. We must now sit out this attack and hope that the perpetrator realises the error of their ways or finds a more worthwhile place to attack. Until this time, service will be intermittent.