14 DAY TRIAL // The highly popular broadband news website Whirlpool.net.au is currently down following a sustained series of DDoS attacks that endangered the performance of its hosting provider's network. The site's owner and the hosting company plan to forward all evidence gathered to the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
Whilpool.net.au is one of the largest and most trafficked websites in Australia, boasting a user base of over 350,000. Yesterday, during the early hours of the morning, the website was the target of repeated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) that left it inaccessible for a total of ten hours.
Bulletproof Networks, the company providing web hosting services for the site, has managed to fend off the original attacks with help from its own uplink providers and ISPs in Denmark and the United States, where the offending IP addresses were located. However, the website was hit again last night, with the malicious traffic being generated by a much larger number of IPs from all over the world.
Since the site isn't driven by a profit motive, after discussing the situation with Bulletproof, its founder, Simon Wright, agreed to keep it offline for today. According to Lorenzo Modesto, chief operating officer at Bulletproof Networks, this move is intended to protect the firm's other customers whose mission critical websites might be affected if the attacks are allowed to continue.
In addition, he said that enough evidence had been gathered so far in order to have the police start an investigation into the matter. "As a result of the latest Distributed Denial of Service attack, which started at approximately 9.40pm on Tuesday the 29th of June, Bulletproof Networks and Whirlpool will be reporting the recent DDoS activity targeting Whirlpool to the Australian Federal Police as defined under Commonwealth legislation within Part 10.7 - Computer Offences of the Criminal Code Act 1995, including denial of service attacks and distributed denial of service attacks using botnets," the company said in a statement to iTnews.
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