14 DAY TRIAL // Image board website 8chan (infinite chan) is currently under a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that is believed to originate from the Lizard Stresser, the booter offered for rent by Lizard Squad hackers.
8chan is not a large discussion board, but it gained the respect of many for its free speech policy, which allows any type of subject to be discussed, regardless of the controversy it generated on other websites. One rule applies though, and that is to not post, request or link to content that is illegal in the US.
Visitors are given the permission to create their own board of discussion and manage it. Also, no registration is required to post messages.
CloudFlare service cannot protect
The traffic to the website is passed through the CloudFlare network, which should protect against a range of threats, including DDoS attacks. CloudFlare functions as a proxy, so visitor requests for 8chan are passed through its network both for improving connection to the website and for analyzing them in order to protect against malicious activity.
However, if an attacker knows the real IP address of 8chan, which seems to be the case here, they can contact the website’s server directly, eliminating any verification from a third-party service.
Trying to connect to 8chan at the moment triggers a 522 error from CloudFlare service, indicating that no connection to the website’s server is achieved.
No one claimed the attack yet, but Lizard Squad’s Twitter account posted that Lizard Stresser DDoS tool was used for at least 24 hours to keep 8chan offline.
Limited version of 8chan to become available if attack prolongs
Computer programmer Fredrick Brennan, the owner of the website, said that he was planning to mend things in the next 12 hours, but he was unsure that this would be possible and announced that the time needed may extend to a day or even two.
He also informs that if 48 hours pass and the issue is not fixed, he will launch a limited version of the image board on a different hosting service. Only a few boards would be available (/pol/, /v/, /gamergate/, /b/) and there would be no possibility for the visitors to create a new board.
“I am pretty confident it will not come to that, but it would be better to have something up rather than nothing if we know the real site is going to be down for a long time (72 hours - 2 weeks),” he said in a post on Pastie.
Brennan is confident that even if DDoS-ing is illegal, there is a small chance for law enforcement to intervene and start an investigation to identify the attackers, because 8chan does not have too large of a community.
Someone has been hitting off 8chan for nearly 24 hours using lots of lizardstresser.su attacks
— R.I.U. Lizard Squad (@LizardMafia) January 8, 2015