Cyberwar!!!!
October 21, 2013 2:45 PM   Subscribe

The Digital Attack Map from Google and Arbor Networks gives you an amazing dynamic visualization of ongoing Distributed Denial of Service and other cyberattacks. You can also go back to see older attacks - like the 6-day long attack on the US in August, attacks on the anniversary of the Korean War, and others. Slate finds it a bit self-serving for Google, but the helpful video explaining DDoS is useful.
posted by blahblahblah (8 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Pretty cool to look at and apparently quite a nice educational tool to boot.
posted by Samizdata at 2:58 PM on October 21, 2013


Why everyone hatin' on the US?
posted by cman at 3:20 PM on October 21, 2013


The Slate defense of DDOS, based on theoretical justification, is a little odd.
posted by jjwiseman at 3:39 PM on October 21, 2013 [1 favorite]


jjwiseman: "The Slate defense of DDOS, based on theoretical justification, is a little odd."

Not for Slate, it doesn't.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:41 PM on October 21, 2013 [1 favorite]


I thought Google used Distributed DOS to run their server farms???
posted by indubitable at 3:42 PM on October 21, 2013


This is neat, but I've always disliked using standard map projections for network data, because square kilometers don't use the Internet, people do. It'd be interesting to see Google try to plot this data on some kind of cartogram with each country scaled by population, or perhaps just the net-enabled population, or maybe even scaled by that country's total bandwidth. I don't know if the techniques used in these maps would yield good results visually, but it does seem like the standard map projection is a poor display of phenomena that primarily involve a small subset of the world's land area.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:45 PM on October 21, 2013 [1 favorite]


For another view of what a DDOS attack looks like, check out some of the Logstalgia visualizations on YouTube. They depict server traffic as a hyperkinetic game of pong; balls that are hit are successful responses, while those that get past are failed responses caused by overwhelmed servers.
posted by dephlogisticated at 5:06 PM on October 21, 2013


Akamai has had a similar attack map for awhile; happily at the moment it's showing roughly the same picture as Google. Other useful Internet traffic overviews are Internet Weather Map, Internet Traffic Report, and Keynote's Internet Pulse. That last one is interesting because to tonycpsu's point it's not really a continent map; instead it's a grid showing major peering interconnects. That's much more the native geography of the Internet.
posted by Nelson at 5:18 PM on October 21, 2013 [2 favorites]


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