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Comment by mxavier | Hacker News Reader

They usually use a tool called the "Low Orbital Ion Cannon" which is really just a DDoS app with a silly GUI slapped on top of it.

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I have to admit that's a pretty funny name for a DDoS client.

You're partially right..

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Denial_of_Service

also, there are irc servers that people set up for different events, but that's getting more into the chanology side of it.

aka botnets?

I do not think they control a botnet- they download that LOIC tool individually, specifically for DDoS purpose. Gawker does not seem to have a serious infrastructure: it looks like they are hosted on DATAGRAM.COM, they do not even have their own IP ranges. So it's probably easy to knock down.

I don't have any respect for people that use Windows-based attack tools, not that I respected 4chan anyways. Windows limits parallel connections, making it pretty much useless for "packeting".

4chan is full of a bunch of 12 year old script kiddies. They don't even know what a buffer overflow is and they think HTML is a programming language.

You don't really need parallel connections when you have a thousand or /b/tards all running the LOIC. That's sufficient to take down medium-sized web properties for short periods of time.

They certainly are script kiddies, but they're not as ignorant as you portray them either.

LOIC is complete junk. It's just a crappy TCP/UDP/HTTP attack tool. They are only strong because of the sheer number of them.

A handful of people using a quality tool like Rsnake's "slowloris" (http://ha.ckers.org/slowloris/) could do much more damage.

Anyone remember smurf attacks? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurf_attack) now that was epic. LOIC is lame.

It's the power of ignorant morons in vast numbers. Kind of like the idiots who loot, riot, and burn cars after sporting events. In both cases, the damage caused isn't a reflection of the power or intellect of those causing the damage. Just a reflection of their sheer numbers and lack of common decency.

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