DDoS Attacks Force Norbits to go Offline
Written by Ernesto on October 08, 2008NorBits, the largest Norwegian BitTorrent tracker, has been pulled offline by their webhosting company due to the continuous DDoS attacks suffered by the site. The host has nullrouted the IPs and told the Norbits staff to find a new home. Meanwhile, NorBits’ staff are trying to calm their users down after a turbulent month.
For weeks on end, the NorBits tracker has been crushed by DDoS attacks. Last month IT-Avisen reported that the tracker had been allegedly hacked by a group called MORRADi. The group threatened to publish all IPs of Norbits’ users, if the site didn’t cease to operate.
Staff members at Norbits now refute these claims in a post on the weblog they recently launched. “There have been rumors that “MORRADi” has IP information on our users. This is not true. DDoS attacks don’t compromise security, it’s only the servers that are overloaded, ” they write.
In response to these “hacker” reports, several users of the tracker took their anger out on journalists who wrote about the site. Trond Bie, who writes for IT-Avisen, and commented on the case in other news outlets as well, was one of the main targets. NorBits staff have condemned these attacks, and say they will ban any users who engage in this kind of behavior.
“We condemn attacks on anyone who criticizes or speak about NorBits. We know that many have sent e-mails to public persons and journalists and we can’t emphasize clearly enough that these only are sent from a small number of our users.”
NorBits staff may have inadvertently motivated this minority, since they briefly replaced their frontpage with a caricature of Trond Bie, which they pulled from his Picasa photo album. This was meant to be a joke though, not an attack on his person, as they explain on the NorBits weblog. “When a journalist is starting to become so obsessed with a webpage that he/she writes about every little modification that is happening on it, that person must accept an humoristic response.”
The photo was removed shortly after it was posted, and for now, the Norbits domain is redirected to the website of Urospredere, an upcoming Norwegian documentary about filesharing. This documentary by Asbjørn Engedal and journalist Simon Eriksen Valvik discusses how filesharing can be made legal, the changes that are needed, and how it will all work. A good cause to support.
Previously: Major Romanian ISP Blocks BitTorrent Site
Next: Santa Cruz University Fights Back at RIAA
35 Responses
thats why PIRATE BAY ruleZ!
oh i love this, thats for not giving me an invite!!!
No seriously, I did laugh a little bit when i heard this. Mostly because MORRADi mean “your mum”, and that in the norwegian IT-avisen they showed a NFO-file probably made by a 12 year old who took all the resposibility for the attack. and that he is from the ftp community or whatever, lmao
Isn’t DDoS illegal, and as such shouldn’t their host take the steps to prevent it/protect Norbits instead of just showing them the door?
As Kyle said on Cartoon Wars Part 2 (Southpark) “By giving in to them, you are allowing the system to work.”
…or can we DDoS any site we want moved?
What this says to me is that its ok to DDoS any network or sites in Norway and you will accomplish your goals, you will get away with it and the ISP will even make it easier for you..
Basicly its a big invite for people to DDoS sites they dont like and the ISP will do the rest for them..
Very bad.. Does not sound like a professional ISP and one that would gladly censor the internet based on morality..
Had they had a better ISP they would have gotten help, the ISP could atleast helped file a report or helped prevent the DDoS’ing..
ISP is to blame here imo.. Net neutrality? wuts dat..
Or they could get Captcha on there page like TL did and stop all this.
this is great news. job well done.
all large torrent sites are constantly under DDOS from anti-p2p
it is part of the learning curve of running a torrent site
suprnova made it look easy
If the DDoS is strong enough a Captcha system wont do anything, you have to stop it at the source, or as close as possible.
DDoS are for button pushers. If you want to hack something Linux and Telnet are the answer.
This is cowardice masquerading as triumph.
That ISP should get their balls lopped.
#5 & #8 :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_service
Captchas are useless against dos attacks.
The only way to stop them is to have a decent host willing to stop the attack (or at least nullroute while waiting for the traffic to drop).
There has also been an article in another norwegian news site where they got a hold of a letter from people claiming to be from the ftp community aswell, they denied that is was anyone from the ftp community that attacked norbits..
http://www.itavisen.no/sak/787533/-_Vi_står_ikke_bak_Norbits-angrep/
Article described in the comment above. It’s in norwegian
Why is this a problem, or even news? You can still go purchase all the content legally as was intended by the artist. Can’t you?
@14 because this is a torrent news site???
@’voice of reason’
Regardless of what you think of filesharing, do you think its right that anyone can just shut down any site they don’t like, without any consequences?
Besides, there are quite a few artists that in fact only relese on torrent these days, so no, you can’t still go purchase all the content as intended by the artist.
@MousAnony:
Denial of Service and “hacking” are two completely different things.
@16
“Regardless of what you think of filesharing, do you think its right that anyone can just shut down any site they don’t like, without any consequences?
————————————–
omg the irony!
Surely a better thing to do is to take them offline temporarily whenever there are attacks? If this is what they do for all cases of DoS attacks, then it would make it super-easy to take any site that they host offlne. Perhaps people could try to DoS attack all sites hosted by this host to prove this point to the host.
Roze
http://www.28chan.org/fs/ <- File-sharing discussion board
@18
Sorry, I don’t follow…
Maybe torrent freak and itavisen should stop writing about these lamers because writing about these atention seekers will only encourage them…
And yes they are lamers, if they where even close to beeing real hackers they would atleast have defaced the norbit site, complete lamers no doubt about it, and everyone with the slightest knowledge about hacking knows that DDoS is the IRL equivilant of shoplifting candy…not something real “criminals” do, just wannabe lamers or kids, as im sure they are…considering the lame ass “group” name ( probably not a group, just some kid with to much time on his hands )
You would think after all these years that someone would have come up with a way to block DOS attacks. I guess not.
Jiff
http://www.anonymity.at.tc
@22 I think the sheer volume of packets involved in torrent sites, what with the searches and the trackers and IPs being pretty important too, all make it ideal for a DDoS attack. Hard to tell until it’s too late, so to speak.
@ 14
Your Mom was AWEsome!
“I have this silly dream of freezing the internet.”
Good evening fellas.Pirates everywhere are being targeted for sharing files/information/copyrighted “bit’s” of shit.In the words of Morris
the Gardner,”Dig A Hole and Plant Yourself.”
@22:
Denial of Service (DoS) is pretty simple to stop, it’s just when it’s Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) – meaning possibly thousands of infected computers are being ordered to flood a server without the user even knowing about it
Go screw yourselves, Norbits. Fucking elitist’s. Please, go die.
Totally lame tracker, used to be a member but had so many alternate sources that was way better that I let my account stay unused for a long long time.
This is a blog, NOT a news site. Go to http://www.fauxnewschannel.com/ if you want news.
Dos and DDos are a favorite of the nub species known as the script kiddie. They are not real hackers though they fantasize that they are. They like to use other peoples hax and explotations to fuel there fantasies of being “733t”. There native language is the language of “733t” most people do not understand what they are saying when they do.
That’s probably because they speak “1337″.
28 gets it right. The fact is that Dos and DDoS attacks are mainly done by script kiddies who have too much time on their hands.
It’s past time that they started going after the people whose computers are doing these attacks, for being stupid enough to not have firewall and anti-virus software on their computers.
Their ISP isn’t powerful enough to filter the isp? They should have moved isp’s long ago on their own.
retards
Wow so this is how MORRADi wastes their time. In all the time they spend harassing trackers or organizing attacks, they could have been releasing cracked software.
Anybody can rip a dvd, make mp3s, scan a book, or crack a program. The scene is a joke.
TorrentFreak: You should never trust ITavisen. A lot of what they write is just plain bullshit.
this is sad.. why would a bunch of hackers do this?
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