Back in uni, we had a Unix server which (unlike the faculty machines) was available for use by any student. Its name was yoyo, and it was invaluable back when internet access was hard to come by, and official university access was only granted to students studying IT subjects.
Why “yoyo”? There was a hope that it wouldn’t be up and down like a yoyo.
Looks like it’s still around: yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au
Unfortunately, my web hosting has been up and down like a yoyo for the last 30 hours or so. Apparently this was due to a DDOS attack on the web host. The ISP moved accounts over to another host, but delays in the DNS propagation meant for a while some people would see an image of a Lamborghini Wank-5000 (or something) that the server was named after. Most inappropriate, at least for me. They’ve now changed this.
Anyway, this is why my various web sites have been very unreliable for the last day or so. Hopefully things have settled down now.
Update Wednesday night: Turns out this was part of a religious war, a distributed denial-of-service attack on the Athiest Foundation of Australia, which was hosted on the same server, run by Netlogistics.
Up until now, Netlogistics have been pretty good, and the price is good for an Australian-based host. As far as I can tell, NetLogistics did reasonably well with the DDOS attack, with a couple of caveats: the information provided was minimal (I never saw anything on their Network Status page when I looked, though they were quick to reply to enquiries, and their discussion forum was kept up-to-date) and that car image instead of a proper outage message made it looked like the site had been hacked.
9 replies on “Up and down like a yoyo”
I’m at Monash and, yes, yoyo is still here and is used more than you’d think. Internet access is easy to come by, but time on a Unix server isn’t necessarily. It’s still run by students and volunteers.
ah … yoyo … those were the days … or at least, they would have been, if it had been up or not under a load of greater than 20 for most of the time … :)
Who is your hoster? That’s really unfortunate.
Joe H, see the update I’ve added to the post.
“Turns out this was part of a religious war, a distributed denial-of-service attack on the Athiest Foundation of Australia, which was hosted on the same server, run by Netlogistics.”
Actually it turns out that it was probably nothing of the sort. There were many websites effected by the DDOS, mine included. Net Logistics has since said that they don’t know who the attack was being directed at. And it was ongoing, after the atheist site was moved to another host.
The Atheist Foundation did a cute media job by claiming it was they who were specifically targeted. This gives them publicity, but is by no means established as fact.
Early on they said they did know who the target was… but even so, I doubt NetLogistics would reveal that information, due to privacy.
I would imagine a DDOS attack might well target routers etc around the target’s web site, and might continue even after that target had moved. You make a good point though; unless NL confirms it, we don’t really know.
I found it quite fascinating and ironic in the link you provided about the Atheist website attack, that next year they will be hosting the Global Atheist Convention here in Melbourne. Has anyone noted the irony that a group of people who won’t give up an hour a week to worship God, are more than happy to give up a weekend to worship, well, nothing really!? We seem to be living in the Twilight Zone!
Who said they’re “worshipping” anything? Not my cup of tea, but every other subject under the sun has a convention or conference, so why not?
One of the organisers was on 774 Melbourne this morning — they still believe the DDOS attack was targetted at them.
Was amusing to hear them repeatedly use phrases like “preaching to the choir” in the context of their convention!
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