Meet Mantis – the tiny shrimp that launched 3,000 DDoS attacks The botnet behind the largest-ever HTTPS-based distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack has been named after a tiny shrimp. Cloudflare said it thwarted the 26 million request per second (rps) attack last month, and we're told the biz has been tracking the botnet ever since. Now, the internet infrastructure company has given …
But intelligent people can and will behave as children.
Cooperation is only opportune when we see a benefit. So is destroying other's "stuff", which can be just as opportune for your benefit.
Many societies have evolved rules to smooth out the extremes of opportunistic behaviour. It is usually part of our upbringing. But many societies have also evolved elites who exploit the rules by creating powerful subcultures, who no longer feel bound by the rules and exploit the system for their own benefit. Here the saying "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" comes to mind.
For those with long memories, MANTIS was (still is!) the name of one of the first 4GLs (late 70s / early 80s as I recall?) - an early example of "any idiot can write computer applications (and bring the entire system to a grinding halt)" snake oil. Just looked it up and Cincom are still marketing it. Like some other Cincom products it was sort of ahead of its time, overtaken by bigger, meaner competitors (looking at you, Oracle...)
When I read the article, I can't help thinking that the target is Cloudflare. If so, their heroic efforts of protection are a lot less impressive. The serve more than just the good and honest web sites and are notorious for turning a deaf ear towards reports about phishing web sites.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
