True DDoS Stories: Black Friday DDoS Cupcakes

So I’m sitting here waiting while a batch of The Jester’s cupcakes is baking. Oh, you didn’t know that the famed Patriot Hacker had skills beyond DoSing the Westboro Baptists and hacking Anonymous? Well, we’ll find out in a few minutes if he’s a decent baker, too. Here’s his recipe for spiced holiday cupcakes with vegan (?) cream cheese.

The cupcakes remind me that this coming week includes not just the American holiday, Thanksgiving, but also Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year. A few years ago I was talking with a prospective customer, a large ad reseller, who got attacked on their busiest day of the year: Black Friday. While they were down they were losing $100,000 of revenue every 30 minutes.

$100,000. Every 30 minutes.

As you can imagine they were frantic. In the end they thought it was a competitor who was behind it, but they couldn’t prove it. This wasn’t an isolated event – we hear about (and help with) unfortunately-timed attacks quite often.

So with all that in mind I’m going to post some more helpful DDoS-related mitigation material on this blog. Watch for it. Here’s a recap of some of the more popular DDoS related content from this blog over the years just to sate your appetite.

Okay, looks like the cupcakes are done. Mmmmmm. Delicious! The vegan cream cheese frosting really makes it great.

Oh and don’t worry about the cupcakes being full of malware, I followed the algorithm for you, and aside from the fact that mine didn’t rise all the way, they appear to be very tasty.