Massive DDoS Attacks Against Arab Networks

Update April 17, 2010 08:30am (GMT +4): salambc.com up and healthy / ArabCrunch.com still down
Update April 16, 2010 06:00pm (GMT +4): salambc.com up and healthy / ArabCrunch.com still down
Update April 16, 2010 05:22pm (GMT +4): salambc.com up (still bit wobbly) and have cut off the DDoS Attackers / ArabCrunch.com still down

Since last night, we have been getting reports of a Distributed Denial of Service (aka DDoS) across targeted technology related business networks in the region.

A Denial of Service attack is a means of burdening or effectively shutting down a remote system by bombarding it with traffic from many computers simultaneously.

At least two networks have been reportedly attacked till now, ArabCrunch and Salam Business Club (SBC). The people SBC reported an incident that could be a coordinated attack against the two networks.

While it’s not really an attack on Arabs (conspiracy theorists, keep your shirts on!), further data to support this has yet to surface. Be sure that we will be keeping you posted as the story progresses.

Incidents like these should serve as a lesson to webmasters about the dangers of having a centralized system rather than a decentralized one as provided by services such as Amazon’s EC2 cloud, which incidentally comes with the price of risking less access to countries in the region under embargo from the US and companies based there.

Heard of any other site who’s service seems to be intermittent recently? Let us know!