[iwar] Attrition stopping its services...

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-05-21 07:52:52


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Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 07:52:52 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] Attrition stopping its services...
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> ATTRITION: Evolution

Definition

Attrition.org is a non-profit hobby site run by a handful of volunteers
in their free time.  Each staff member at Attrition has a day job that
takes a considerable amount of time, as well as other hobbies, and a
social life (despite popular rumor).  Over the last two years, the site
has moved from a few random specialty pages to an archive of over seven
gigs of diverse material and specialized content.  With no corporate
backing, no income, no 'guidance', no leash and no muzzle, Attrition
continued to move in a direction that values truth and bluntness over
sugar coated words and fluff. 

Decision

One of the most predominant sections of Attrition has been the
defacement mirror.  What began as a small collection of web site
defacement mirrors soon turned into a near 24/7 chore of keeping it up
to date.  In the last month, we have experienced single days of
mirroring over 100 defaced web sites, over three times the total for
1995 and 1996 combined.  With the rapid increase in web defacement
activity, there are times when it requires one of us to take mirrors for
four or five hours straight to catch up.  Add to that the scripts and
utilities needed to keep the mirror updated, statistics generated, mail
lists maintained, and the time required for basic functionality is
immense.  A "hobby" is supposed to be enjoyable.  Maintaining the mirror
is becoming a thankless chore. 

During this time, we have struggled to keep up various other sections of
Attrition that have been a core part of the site.  As the mirror grew
and began to consume more resources, the other sections have found
themselves on the backburner and rarely updated.  In essence, what was
once a hobby site run in spare time for fun has turned into a
beleaguring second job.  A job that comes with more headache,
complaints, criticisms, slander and attacks than productive output or
reward.  In two years we have turned away countless computer security
work that could have been fulfilled by a number of us.  The abuse and
ignorance we deal with from defacers and defacement victims is
staggering, and some of that abuse spills over into actual attacks. 
Attrition has been taken down more than once by massive denial of
service attacks which have inconvenienced our generous upstream
provider, hundreds of other colo customers, and thousands of dialup
customers, making our job even more difficult. 

With that, the mirror will no longer be maintained.  We've served our
time. 

Direction

As the mirror itself is phased out, several aspects of the process will
remain.  One of the most useful and practical resources spawned from the
mirror are the statistics generated.  It is our intention to continue to
perform statistical analysis of defacements by utilizing the Alldas
mirror.  We have already begun sharing incoming defacement notifications
with them to help facilitate the accurate and consistent mirroring of
sites as we learn of them.  We will also continue to provide commentary
and articles on high profile defacements, significant trends or other
activity that warrants attention. 

Resurrection and revamping of our Errata section should happen in the
short term.  It has been an oft overlooked resource despite the
infrequent updates.  With security and hackers becoming ever more
popular with the press outlets, the need for vigilance is growing.  It
is important for members of the security community to be aware of
journalists and news outlets more interested in flashy headlines and a
quick buck. 

The various subsections of our security page will continue to be updated
including more guides to implementing security, testing security,
forensics, incident response and more.  No doubt various staff members
will continue to add to the 'rants' page as time goes on. 

Several other areas such as the image gallery, music reviews, movie
reviews, poetry, contests, and the ever popular 'Going Postal' will now
receive more attention. 

Dedication

As more and more hours were dedicated to running the mirror, the feeling
of burnout crept into a few of us.  Despite this, it is our intention
that we stay dedicated to Attrition and improving it on a daily basis. 
This doesn't mean there will be new visible content on the news page
every day.  It does mean that every day we will be working on one aspect
of the site or another.  Often times this is done by answering mail,
developing small utilities to help improve the quality of administrative
life, or something else not visible to the web site.  We are evolving,
bear with us - and we'll continue to provide the community with the
quality content it's come to expect, just in a different package. 

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-06-30 21:44:13 PDT