Comment by Vecr
4 years ago
KF has their own server, own ISP/router boxes, own IPs, and their own colo hardware. The issue is that it's not that expensive on an absolute level (hundreds of dollars to take them out for a day) to just saturate their gigabit downlink. You get another gigabit downlink, they saturate that too. Ten gigabits, a bit harder, but still pretty easy. You need to have hundreds of gitabits of downlink on standby (at least, I assume Google has terabits of downlink and clever load balancing). That's not something even a well resourced city newspaper could set up at their headquarters without digging major fiber interconnects and hooking up to fiber lines going to the couple closest internet exchanges.
Edit: this assumes some level of BGP filtering and monitoring of what IPs send you packets, you really need cooperation from your upstream providers and your own BGP router to even survive this much.
I don't know anything about KF but they sound like a vigilante group and people are responding to them with vigilante tactics. The internet has some flaws that people take advantage of and I support ongoing research to mitigate these. The internet still seems like the Wild West in some ways.
Not at all. Rule number one of the site is basically "look but don't touch" Trying to even talk about harassment or "swatting" is banned. It goes against the whole point of the site.