This is funny, but not how DDoS attacks work.
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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I think it's making fun of Elon calling the delay in his interview with Trump the result of a DDOS attack, when best case scenario it looks like it might have been caused by too much normal traffic straining the twitter servers trying to watch it.
Ah, I thought this was a straight generic anti-car pitch.
DDoS is more like everyone buying all the toilet paper all at once. At least, that's my limited understanding. Traffic is just a bandwidth issue. Turns out that, over longer distances, we should be using fiber (trains) instead of normal cat-5.
DDoS is more like everyone buying all the toilet paper all at once.
I would say its more akin to one malicious actor ordering a bunch of zombies to wander into a store, buy a roll of tolietpaper, walk over to the return counter, get a refund, and then go back to buy a roll of toilet paper, with the intent of clogging all the check out counters indefinitely.
But the root difference is that a DDoS exists to obstruct traffic not to perform a legitimate function. A bunch of people clearing the shelves of supplies before a storm are still intent on obtaining the things. Their traffic is legitimate, not an attempt to deny other people access to the store by spoofing serious interactions.
Ah, okay, understood. That small distinction makes all the difference.
Okay, so it looks like a number of people want to get into the weeds in analyzing this analogy, so let's do it: People need to get places, so car traffic has a legitimate function, whereas DDoS traffic is entirely useless, right?
But cars don't need to get places, only people do.
There's some overhead in IP packets, not all of the data sent over the network is payload. It's kept to a minimum. Perhaps we could say that a packet is like using a 10kg bicycle to move an 80kg rider. But what about using a 2,200kg vehicle to move that person? It's like using IP packets with 27kB of headers for each 1kB of data! If lots of users hit a server with a data stream like that, and bring it to its knees, that sounds a lot like a DDoS. If that users know in advance that it's going to bring down the server, how's that not a DDoS?
Great podcast btw. Lots of guest speakers, authors, and many great stories about how car dependancy has shaped peoples and animal's lives.
They have some really good episodes, I liked the one on batteries for small vehicles in new York.
However, I often feel like some of their topics aren't really relevant (to me), especially since they are focused on the US. I much prefer the urbanist agenda by NJB.
But yeah, good Podcast, fuck cars.
*on people
Beautiful !