[liberationtech] On Burma DDoS attack

[Collin Anderson]

I wouldn't be surprised if no one claimed responsibility. I think it's
legitimate to assume that the motivation of diaspora explains the events (or
for that matter, well-meaning Western freedom-loving types).

For all these questions about political expediency, I don't doubt that the
junta couldn't flip a switch without any reprisal. If they did, they could
always just blame outside meddling. While I disagree with Elham's
timeline/causation, I think one can more importantly assert there is a huge
difference between Iran and Burma in terms of technology use and government
dependency.

With regressing to these cliches about efficiency and regimes, I would be
more interested in whether there were bureaucratic impediments to taking
action. After all, who wants to be the one responsible, on paper, for
null-routing myanmar.gov.mm? Were I some poor Burmese admin, assuming I have
much of a background in security anyway, I think I would let who ever is
doing this time to get bored and quit.

-CDA

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 12:59 PM, elham gheytanchi <elhamucla at hotmail.com>wrote:

>  I think turning off the switch can create a lot of mess- protest among
> governmental workers and in the society in large. The government now depends
> on the Internet as well. In the case of Iran, turning off the switch- for a
> few hours in the past- had created massive waves of protest that the
> government just cannot afford.
>
> best,
> elham gheytanchi
>
>
> > Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2010 11:18:29 -0500
> > From: hroberts at cyber.law.harvard.edu
> > To: piracee at hrw.org
> > CC: liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu
> > Subject: Re: [liberationtech] On Burma DDoS attack
>
> >
> > It's been privately reported to me that a large majority of the sites
> > under attack appear to be private government sites. A thing to keep in
> > mind is that it's individual sites being attacked, not the network as a
> > whole (at least the sites are being targeted -- the intent may well be
> > to take down the network). I think the core question is if it is
> > government sites being attacked, why doesn't the government just null
> > route them? It'd be painful, but much less so than the whole country
> > being offline, unless the government sees a benefit in being in the role
> > of a victim.
> >
> > Of course, it could be the government attacking itself for some reason
> > as well, though that seems like a lot of work when they could instead
> > just flip a switch to take themselves off the network.
> >
> > -hal
> >
> > On 11/4/10 11:03 AM, Enrique Piraces wrote:
> > > Has anybody come across evidence that can support the claim of a
> > > politically motivated attack?
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Enrique
> > >
> > >
> > >
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