[usernam33]

Following the doxxing of the people behind pr0gramm.com the community knew that retaliation by ddos or other bad methods would not work for Brian Krebs, who enjoys DDOS protection by google. So they started a donation raid on the German Cancer Help Foundation, because Krebs literally tranlates to cancer in german. The raid is ongoing and unconfirmed sources talk about 11k donations. The avarage ammount seems to be > 15€ with at least one single donation of 10k€

rel. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16678536

[wjnc]

That's a big plus in hacker humour, considering DDoS, swatting and other malicious stuff (get it) flung at Krebs.

Edit: are they DDoSsing or donating? If the former, than it's even worse form. Had my hopes up for a second. The article talks about a failing site because of many donations, but other replies here about DDoS.

[cabraca]

They are donating and posting their confirmation mails on pr0gramm.com. The servers cant keep up with the amount of donations.

[kurthr]

Hmmm... it's interesting if true. Or we could be being trolled by the same group along with Von Lars Wienand.

It would still be a bit sad if a cancer donation site could be brought down with so much less than 1 donation per second, but I'd use occam's razor.

[tmz]

The institutes which have been donated to are confirming a huge amount of Donations, which started last night. So there are very many real donations.

[kurthr]

Awesome! There were 4000 (plus 73) donations at the time and I hear that there have been more than 10k over the last day for more than 100k euro.

Still we don't know if that brought down the server accidentally or on purpose. It's a question of intent, and their desire for publicity. Sadly, it only takes one.

[lawl]

No DDoSing, the site is collapsing from donations.

[kurthr]

How many (hundreds or even thousands?) donations over how many hours... and nothing else is causing the server to fall over. That's one incredibly slow server.

[lawl]

> How many (hundreds or even thousands?) donations over how many hours

> The raid is ongoing and unconfirmed sources talk about 11k donations.

I mean, the site is back up now and the raid still ongoing, but I can very well imagine the (shared?) server of a charity collapsing when suddenly even a few hundred or thousand people start clicking around on the website simultaneously.

But I guess you have to call the charity and ask them if you want exact numbers?

[kurthr]

Woah... so most of the people who donated were (from your post) clicking around on the site at the same time? That sounds like a slashdotting-DDOS. Was "the raid" coordinated, because (according to you) it sounds like it?

I'd have to know that the charity was real, that all of those clicks were real, the donations were real, and that they weren't coordinated in loading particularly heavy pages with the intent to bring it down. Cui bono from the publicity?

A side question: Who is Dr. Matthias Moench (now I really want to know) and what murder was he convicted of? that seems almost as relevant.

[lawl]

Sorry, but I think this is the wrong website for baseless conspiracy theories.

[jstanley]

I don't understand?

They're getting back at Krebs by donating to a charity?

[IAmEveryone]

Yeah, I was having a bit of trouble as well...

They're not (intentionally) DDOSing the charity. The charity's website is simply overloaded from visitors seeking to donate.

The charity's slogan is "Cancer (Krebs) is one of the worst problems of our time". So I guess it makes sense. Somehow.

It's the sort of passive-egressive altruism that quite elegantly straddles the divide of childishness and maturity.

[lweber]

The word "Krebs" in German translates to crab as well as cancer. They are donating to the charities that work against cancer and are commenting "Krebs ist scheiße" which would translate to "Cancer is shit" as well as "[Brian ]Krebs is shit".

[ChrisSD]

But aren't they still, in essence, donating to charity to get back at Krebs?

[lawl]

I think it's more of a peaceful protest against his questionable journalism practices rather than getting back at him.

But yes.

[Tomte]

Yes, that makes it so beautiful, IMO.

And since the server crashed, they donated to other charities, as well. DKMS saw many donations, as well.

[tscs37]

Cancer translates to Krebs in germany, they're donating to "fight against Krebs" so to speak.

[namibj]

They are DDOSing a german cancer help, krebshilfe. See the substring match?

[lawl]

They aren't (intentionally) DDoSing. The site simple couldn't handle the legitimate load of thousands of donations.