Twitpocalypse: Best analysis yet of ongoing massive DDOS attacks

From Dueling Analogs webcomic, click here for large size (via Wayne's Friends List)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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VICTOR JIMENEZ

I laughed so hard my chest hurts!
“Pedobear? In my Boingboing?”
Ocala Web Design

That is tooo funnnyyyyyy. LMAO
Anonymous

I’m 42 years old. I don’t understand this.
Anonymous

The comic refers not to the ruskies ddos attack that everyone knows did not come from 4chan, but a mostly harmless prank that was perpetrated by 4chan. Google hashtag gorillapenis. Here is one of the first results: http://www.pcworld.com/article/167889/twitter_travails_pranks_and_deleted_account_errors.html
Anonymous

That’s just wrong :-p
Kieran O’Neill

@GibblestheChimp: That story smells rather fishy – hackers DDOS Google, Twitter, LiveJournal and Facebook just to silence one Georgian blogger (who subsequently becomes enormously popular worldwide on the wave of publicity)?

I’d entertain the possibility that the botnet was hired by Georgian authorities to smear the Russians.

(Or maybe it was just incompetence on the part of Russian authorities, or even spontaneous misguided patriotism on the part of the Russian Mafia owners of said botnet.)

Still, it’s pretty annoying when global internet resources are targeted due to local politics. And ominous.
Anonymous

It wasn’t the Ruskies, it was definitely eBaums.
benenglish

I’m 49 years old and deeply embarrassed to admit that I understood this.
Thorzdad

So, how did Twitter piss-off 4chan? Simply by existing?
knowles

you know, that’s not really rule #1.
Xenu

No, Rule #1 is that you don’t talk about /b/
Anonymous

Please, someone enlighten us to whats going on with the last panel.
frenchtoastkiss

@#37
It’s more likely than you think
Anonymous

I’m a 43 year old woman working in a field that has nothing to do with technology or the Internet or anime or manga or lolcats or Scientology/Anonymous etc., in fact, I don’t even know how to jailbreak my iPhone, and I understood this.
RevEng

The bear is called “pedobear” because he looks like a pedophile. Since Twitter is only 3 years old, it’s being accosted by the pedobear.

Pedobear started off as an ASCII art drawing that was posted in the comments of sites like Digg, usually when an article mentions kids.

Half of you will find him hilarious, the other half, offensive.
Talia

Rose, humor is a common way people cope with the most awful stuff.

I mean hell. People joke about 9/11 and the holocaust.
Eseck

Internet generation gaps make me lol
bcsizemo

Umm..

See google images and search “pedobear”…

I won’t even bother to link to any of it, cause really pedo-bear…(I’m only 3…)
IWood

I’m 108 and I understood this before I read it.
benenglish

#8 – Pedobear really likes three year olds.

Of course, I’m a little confused by the assumption that Twitter is female which is implicit in the use of that particular version of Pedobear. I don’t really know what to make of that.

Maybe I don’t understand this stuff as well as I thought.

Hmmm. I feel better, now.
SeattlePete

@#8:

Surprise buttsecks.
Anonymous

ok fine…who is 4chan?
Anonymous

Is that Pedobear??? ROFL
jamesneysmith

this is officially the first time I have ever heard of ‘pedobear’ … I thought I knew you internet yet you go make me look like a fool.
Snowpea

Since until know, I didn’t know of the existence of pedobear, I thought it was an odd rendition of the Soviet Bear!..

I had heard on the news that most of the attacks were coming from old Soviet Block (Georgia and Russia are apparently duking it out online as well). True or not, no clue, but the cartoon is cute.
Anonymous

BRB, FBI
Anonymous

Is anyone else getting really tired of 4chan’s mob attacks being treated as somehow precious and adorable? This is distributed sociopathy, guys.

I know that it’s the American way to dismiss uncomfortable criticisms as the product of humorlessness. But come on. Tell me these little bastards aren’t getting kinda scary.
Matt Katz

For reals, there is an alternative to having a centralized service that 4chan can shut down. The solution to distributed denial of service is distributed delivery of service.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/open-source-â€™twitterâ€™-network-could-fend-off-the-next-twitpocalypse/
JoshuaTerrell

Oh Twitter. I give it a year before people get tired of it.

4chan however, will live forever, or at least as long as nerds want hentai.
Anonymous

That may not be rule #1, but you are surprisingly close to rule #34.
Anonymous

#10 Um, pedobear was way before Digg. Pedobear is actually a meme taken from 4chan’s Japanese predecessor, 2channel, sans pedophile implications. That was just something 4chan’s English audiences decided to stick on for flavor. Yes, he may just be a bear with an unhealthy love of children, but you should at least get your meme history right.

Unless you’re just trying to misinform people. In which case, carry on.
Jason Rizos

This is an all-time favorite of my from HiJinks Ensue.
Darren Garrison

Wait– isn’t that the guy from that new movie?

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/5991/wtwta.jpg
George William Herbert

So, so wrong. And yet the perfect metaphor.
Anonymous

@#10:
Actually, Pedobear [NSFW, why did you click on that?] was originally a character from 4chan’s honorable Japanese ancestor 2chan.

There he was known as “Kuma,” a general lech and free-spirit prone to drinking and chasing women. Since he was often featured pursuing typically pubescent-looking anime women, 4channers who can’t read Japanese started calling him “Pedobear” and the name stuck.

oh god why do i know this i am not good with computers
vjinterkosmos

First I was like :I
But then I caffeinated my keyboard.
JenniferJ

This is hilarious!
Anonymous

please tell me someone is writing this all down so it can be studied by future peopleoids. they will no doubt find it intriguing.
Anonymous

awesome, i bet there are like over 9000 people confused by pedobear right now.

“im in ur blog confuzin yer noobs.”
Anonymous

45 and I’ve been on the internet since before NCSA Mosaic. I understood it perfectly. Kids didn’t invent the net.
brucethehoon

in b4 404
Anonymous

im 12 and what is this?
noneofyourbusiness

That was AWESOME.
Anonymous

If this posts ends in 51, I pwn boingboing 4eva.

51 get
rockbugg

I thought this one from HijiNKS Ensue did a pretty good job of showing how twitter users reacted:

http://hijinksensue.com/2009/08/07/the-song-of-the-unsuccessful-aquatic-mammal/
pho queen

i don’t get the part about #gorillapenis
rose bush

there is NOTHING even remotely funny about a pedophile. nor a cartoon featuring one
Francesco Fondi

Pedobear on BB?! What’s next? A weekly strip on NYT?! Yes, with stralol strips like this I could even buy a printed newspaper!!
Anonymous

First I was like :{
But then I was like: “Fnaaaaaaaaaaaaah”
Drew from Zhrodague

I ROFLed.
z7q2

4chan’s mob attacks are doing you a favor by breaking the internet and showing what a teetering house of cards it is. What else is going to get people off their butts and make them fix things like vulnerabilities to DDOS attacks?

With a little effort any enterprising individual can own hundreds of thousands of other people’s computers and bring parts of the internet to it’s knees on a silly whim, and our best and brightest minds simply shrug and say there’s nothing we can do except deal with it after it happens. What does that say to our serious motivated enemies with serious resources, I ask you. It says that we’re willing to stand there with our pants down and let them crash our internets because we can’t even deal with a bunch of bored kids.

You better treat 4chan’s mob mentality as scary, now, and find a way to deal with it effectively. It’s a small preview of what can happen in the future.
Camp Freddie

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a pedobear ejaculating on a human face – forever.
GibblesTheChimp

Funny strip, but in this case inaccurate. 4chan wasn’t behind the DDOS attack(s) on Twitter / Facebook.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/080709-twitter-ddos-attack-politically-motivated.html