[bjano]

> blackholing is a blunt but crucial weapon in our arsenal, giving us the ability to ‘cut off a finger to save the hand’ – that is, to sacrifice the customer who is being attacked in order to keep the others online

There is something very ironic about this. They have a policy which instead of addressing the problem actively assists anyone wanting to attack their customers. No surprise that these customers have been complaining about this practice for a long time. But until now it was Somebody Else's Problem so they didn't bother figuring out some proper (or at least less terrible) solution. Now this lack of preparedness bit them in the ass...

[jsmthrowaway]

I'd posit that 98% of providers from whom you can acquire budget VPS will do the same thing. The practice is not unique to Linode; why should a network you're paying $20-$100 do everything they can to keep a target online and threaten other customers?

Contrary to popular opinion, if you're getting DoS attacked, you're either (a) popular enough to start thinking about adult-size pants for your transit strategy or (b) inviting the attention by your choice of content or activities. In years of hosting, I started to know the targets of DoS attacks by name. You have to own at least a little bit of responsibility, and mitigate on your own end if you're going to be inviting that kind of attention; IRC and controversial blogs are the usual suspects here, but that's probably changed recently as I've been out of the hosting game for a while.

Linode has few options for reacting other than the one they use. I know that sucks, but it's how it is.

[bjano]

Yes, customers of other budget VPS providers are complaining about this too.

> why should a network you're paying $20-$100 do everything they can to keep a target online and threaten other customers?

I am not a network engineer and I know that this is a very difficult problem. But when the provider doesn't even _seem_ to try, it only encourages further attacks.

[encoderer]

So, if you're big like you say, you're paying more than $20-100 a month. That's the very absolute entry level price point there.

[X-Istence]

OVH has their DDoS system sitting in front of their entire network. VPS and grown-up physical servers...