Twitpocalypse: Best analysis yet of ongoing massive DDOS attacks

From Dueling Analogs webcomic, click here for large size (via Wayne's Friends List)

[#1 posted by Drew from Zhrodague, August 10, 2009 7:07 PM]

I ROFLed.

[#2 posted by Ocala Web Design, August 10, 2009 7:47 PM]

That is tooo funnnyyyyyy. LMAO

[#3 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 7:48 PM]

I'm 42 years old. I don't understand this.

[#4 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 7:52 PM]

That's just wrong :-p

[#5 posted by benenglish, August 10, 2009 8:05 PM]

I'm 49 years old and deeply embarrassed to admit that I understood this.

[#6 posted by knowles, August 10, 2009 8:15 PM]

you know, that's not really rule #1.

[#7 posted by Xenu, August 10, 2009 8:15 PM]

No, Rule #1 is that you don't talk about /b/

[#8 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 8:17 PM]

Please, someone enlighten us to whats going on with the last panel.

[#9 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 8:27 PM]

I'm a 43 year old woman working in a field that has nothing to do with technology or the Internet or anime or manga or lolcats or Scientology/Anonymous etc., in fact, I don't even know how to jailbreak my iPhone, and I understood this.

[#10 posted by RevEng, August 10, 2009 8:28 PM]

The bear is called "pedobear" because he looks like a pedophile. Since Twitter is only 3 years old, it's being accosted by the pedobear.

Pedobear started off as an ASCII art drawing that was posted in the comments of sites like Digg, usually when an article mentions kids.

Half of you will find him hilarious, the other half, offensive.

[#11 posted by Eseck, August 10, 2009 8:28 PM]

Internet generation gaps make me lol

[#12 posted by bcsizemo, August 10, 2009 8:29 PM]

Umm..

See google images and search "pedobear"...

I won't even bother to link to any of it, cause really pedo-bear...(I'm only 3...)

[#13 posted by IWood, August 10, 2009 8:30 PM]

I'm 108 and I understood this before I read it.

[#14 posted by benenglish, August 10, 2009 8:30 PM]

#8 - Pedobear really likes three year olds.

Of course, I'm a little confused by the assumption that Twitter is female which is implicit in the use of that particular version of Pedobear. I don't really know what to make of that.

Maybe I don't understand this stuff as well as I thought.

Hmmm. I feel better, now.

[#15 posted by SeattlePete, August 10, 2009 8:34 PM]

@#8:

Surprise buttsecks.

[#16 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 8:41 PM]

ok fine...who is 4chan?

[#17 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 8:41 PM]

Is that Pedobear??? ROFL

[#18 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 9:12 PM]

BRB, FBI

[#19 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 9:26 PM]

Is anyone else getting really tired of 4chan's mob attacks being treated as somehow precious and adorable? This is distributed sociopathy, guys.

I know that it's the American way to dismiss uncomfortable criticisms as the product of humorlessness. But come on. Tell me these little bastards aren't getting kinda scary.

[#20 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 9:57 PM]

That may not be rule #1, but you are surprisingly close to rule #34.

[#21 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 10:03 PM]

#10 Um, pedobear was way before Digg. Pedobear is actually a meme taken from 4chan's Japanese predecessor, 2channel, sans pedophile implications. That was just something 4chan's English audiences decided to stick on for flavor. Yes, he may just be a bear with an unhealthy love of children, but you should at least get your meme history right.

Unless you're just trying to misinform people. In which case, carry on.

[#22 posted by Jason Rizos, August 10, 2009 10:07 PM]

This is an all-time favorite of my from HiJinks Ensue.

[#23 posted by Darren Garrison, August 10, 2009 10:12 PM]

Wait-- isn't that the guy from that new movie?

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/5991/wtwta.jpg

[#24 posted by George William Herbert, August 10, 2009 10:15 PM]

So, so wrong. And yet the perfect metaphor.

[#25 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 10:21 PM]

@#10:
Actually, Pedobear [NSFW, why did you click on that?] was originally a character from 4chan's honorable Japanese ancestor 2chan.

There he was known as "Kuma," a general lech and free-spirit prone to drinking and chasing women. Since he was often featured pursuing typically pubescent-looking anime women, 4channers who can't read Japanese started calling him "Pedobear" and the name stuck.

oh god why do i know this i am not good with computers

[#26 posted by vjinterkosmos, August 10, 2009 11:20 PM]

First I was like :I
But then I caffeinated my keyboard.

[#27 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 11:28 PM]

please tell me someone is writing this all down so it can be studied by future peopleoids. they will no doubt find it intriguing.

[#28 posted by Anonymous, August 10, 2009 11:43 PM]

45 and I've been on the internet since before NCSA Mosaic. I understood it perfectly. Kids didn't invent the net.

[#29 posted by noneofyourbusiness, August 11, 2009 1:14 AM]

That was AWESOME.

[#30 posted by pho queen, August 11, 2009 1:47 AM]

i don't get the part about #gorillapenis

[#31 posted by rose bush, August 11, 2009 1:52 AM]

there is NOTHING even remotely funny about a pedophile. nor a cartoon featuring one

[#32 posted by Francesco Fondi, August 11, 2009 2:05 AM]

Pedobear on BB?! What's next? A weekly strip on NYT?! Yes, with stralol strips like this I could even buy a printed newspaper!!

[#33 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 2:30 AM]

First I was like :{
But then I was like: "Fnaaaaaaaaaaaaah"

[#34 posted by z7q2, August 11, 2009 3:56 AM]

4chan's mob attacks are doing you a favor by breaking the internet and showing what a teetering house of cards it is. What else is going to get people off their butts and make them fix things like vulnerabilities to DDOS attacks?

With a little effort any enterprising individual can own hundreds of thousands of other people's computers and bring parts of the internet to it's knees on a silly whim, and our best and brightest minds simply shrug and say there's nothing we can do except deal with it after it happens. What does that say to our serious motivated enemies with serious resources, I ask you. It says that we're willing to stand there with our pants down and let them crash our internets because we can't even deal with a bunch of bored kids.

You better treat 4chan's mob mentality as scary, now, and find a way to deal with it effectively. It's a small preview of what can happen in the future.

[#35 posted by Camp Freddie, August 11, 2009 4:15 AM]

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a pedobear ejaculating on a human face - forever.

[#36 posted by VICTOR JIMENEZ, August 11, 2009 4:48 AM]

I laughed so hard my chest hurts!
"Pedobear? In my Boingboing?"

[#37 posted by Thorzdad, August 11, 2009 6:21 AM]

So, how did Twitter piss-off 4chan? Simply by existing?

[#38 posted by Talia, August 11, 2009 6:45 AM]

Rose, humor is a common way people cope with the most awful stuff.

I mean hell. People joke about 9/11 and the holocaust.

[#39 posted by jamesneysmith, August 11, 2009 7:11 AM]

this is officially the first time I have ever heard of 'pedobear' ... I thought I knew you internet yet you go make me look like a fool.

[#40 posted by Snowpea, August 11, 2009 7:13 AM]

Since until know, I didn't know of the existence of pedobear, I thought it was an odd rendition of the Soviet Bear!..

I had heard on the news that most of the attacks were coming from old Soviet Block (Georgia and Russia are apparently duking it out online as well). True or not, no clue, but the cartoon is cute.

[#41 posted by Matt Katz, August 11, 2009 7:27 AM]

For reals, there is an alternative to having a centralized service that 4chan can shut down. The solution to distributed denial of service is distributed delivery of service.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/open-source-’twitter’-network-could-fend-off-the-next-twitpocalypse/

[#42 posted by JoshuaTerrell, August 11, 2009 7:31 AM]

Oh Twitter. I give it a year before people get tired of it.

4chan however, will live forever, or at least as long as nerds want hentai.

[#43 posted by JenniferJ, August 11, 2009 8:08 AM]

This is hilarious!

[#44 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 8:14 AM]

awesome, i bet there are like over 9000 people confused by pedobear right now.

"im in ur blog confuzin yer noobs."

[#45 posted by brucethehoon, August 11, 2009 8:24 AM]

in b4 404

[#46 posted by rockbugg, August 11, 2009 8:48 AM]

I thought this one from HijiNKS Ensue did a pretty good job of showing how twitter users reacted:

http://hijinksensue.com/2009/08/07/the-song-of-the-unsuccessful-aquatic-mammal/

[#47 posted by GibblesTheChimp, August 11, 2009 9:40 AM]

Funny strip, but in this case inaccurate. 4chan wasn't behind the DDOS attack(s) on Twitter / Facebook.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/080709-twitter-ddos-attack-politically-motivated.html

[#48 posted by Kieran O'Neill, August 11, 2009 10:07 AM]

@GibblestheChimp: That story smells rather fishy - hackers DDOS Google, Twitter, LiveJournal and Facebook just to silence one Georgian blogger (who subsequently becomes enormously popular worldwide on the wave of publicity)?

I'd entertain the possibility that the botnet was hired by Georgian authorities to smear the Russians.

(Or maybe it was just incompetence on the part of Russian authorities, or even spontaneous misguided patriotism on the part of the Russian Mafia owners of said botnet.)

Still, it's pretty annoying when global internet resources are targeted due to local politics. And ominous.

[#49 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 10:16 AM]

It wasn't the Ruskies, it was definitely eBaums.

[#50 posted by frenchtoastkiss, August 11, 2009 10:29 AM]

@#37
It's more likely than you think

[#51 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 12:04 PM]

If this posts ends in 51, I pwn boingboing 4eva.

51 get

[#52 posted by Anonymous, August 11, 2009 8:47 PM]

The comic refers not to the ruskies ddos attack that everyone knows did not come from 4chan, but a mostly harmless prank that was perpetrated by 4chan. Google hashtag gorillapenis. Here is one of the first results: www.pcworld.com/article/167889/twitter_travails_pranks_and_deleted_account_errors.html

[#53 posted by Anonymous, August 12, 2009 5:27 AM]

im 12 and what is this?