anna.morris's blog

I met Mike Little for a coffee the other day. He is one of the founders of WordPress and main organiser of the Manchester WordPress User Group. I was pondering various things we had discussed about improving Free Software group collaboration in Manchester through events such as our CryptoParty – as I was doing this I was running his business card along the gaps in my keyboard back and forth, without really looking at what I was doing…. and look what came out!! All sorts of grossness that I never knew existed. The moral of this story is that when Manchester Groups work together, all the grossness can be cleared away and our minds and hearts (and keyborards) will be free from cat hair and biscuit crumbs once more! Or something like that….

Anyway – watch this space for a suuuper freeeking cool collaboration between FSFE-Mcr and MWUG coming soon… it will blow your minds I promise!! 🙂

GreenNet, a London based ISP and co-founder of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), have suffered an extensive and lengthy  DDoS Attack – and a subsequent block by their upstream providers. Both the APC and GreenNet websites are still down, and many green net customers, which are predominately charities and activists, have been without service for several days.

The attack began at 10.15 BST on Thursday 1 August 2013 seems to be ongoing as of 22:20 BST on Sunday 4th August 2013.

GreenNet, which is a service “geared to the needs of non-profit organisations, activists and people working for social change” [1] are vocal defenders of digital rights, including privacy and the right to communicate. Green net are a non-profit who use Free Software. They founded an educational IT charity.

APC have an extensive list of achievements which include amazing programs  / events for women technology users in Africa. They have been integral to getting the developing world on-line and were the first ISP in many such countries.

It is not clear who has attacked APC/GN or why. Who ever they are, they are no friend to hactivism.

Green net responded to the DDoS attack:

@DocRichard BTW when things quieten down, we might estimate carbon emissions of an attack like this. Thanks for your support.

— Green Net (@GreenNetISP) August 4, 2013

UPDATE: 4th Aug 23:19 BST.

GreenNet has been under DDoS attack since 2013-08-01; Privacy International’s website is down as a result http://t.co/SeNpM7CW4G

— jah (@jahboite) August 4, 2013

UPDATE: 4th Aug 23:24 BST Also affected: