DDoS gets SDF Public Access Evicted

January 31st, 2003

The SDF Public Access UNIX System 501(c)7, one of the oldest of its
kind predating and exceeding the life of many commercial providers,
had its co-location contract terminated without written notice or
ample warning today.  A community of 2800+ voting ARPA members
as well as 18000+ pre-validated and associate members are without
email and shell access.  Many members had become dependent on
SDF for their daily personal and business use.

SDF hosted over 4000 webpages, some of them were home pages for
contributing businesses such as the Saddle Peak Lodge (Los Angeles, CA),
Granger Heating & Air (Dallas, TX), and the Japanese Illustrator's
Club (Yokohama, JP). 

Many UNIX and internetworking classes have been taught online using
SDF's facilities.  A 4 quarter credit hours "Introduction to UNIX"
class being taught at Rhodes College was to be conducted over the 
next 12 weeks.  An introduction to Python programming was scheduled for
a Germany university as well.

It is unclear when the DDoS attack targeting SDF began and NWLINK is unable
to provide source information.  "..even if we do find them, we can't share 
that information with you" - NWLINK NMC tech.  "Somebody out there doesn't
like you .. we have to protect our customers" - Joe Kieser, VP of NWLINK.


A brief history of SDF ...

1987 SDF is formed by Ted Uhlemann, Stephen Jones and Daniel Finster.
1990 They vow to replaced 'killer' attctc.dallas.tx.us when it is abruptly
     shutdown during operationg SunDevil. ~50 users
1992 Daniel and Ted leave to form a commercial ISP.  Stephen takes over 
     responsibilities for SDF.  ~2500 users
1993 SDF has 10 dialups with two UUCP feeds and a SLIP connection. 
     ~5000 users
1996 a voting user membership of contributors is formed (ARPA).   
     ISDN 128kbps, ~10,000 users (100 concurrent)
     NetBSD 1.1 is installed on sevcom.com
1997 the last AT&T 3b2 system is decomissioned.  
     1.5mbit ADSL, ~15,000 users (150 concurrent)
2000 migrates to Alpha/NetBSD.  
2001 SDF-EU is created as an independent project
2002 ~20,000 users (300 concurrent)

(The user counts are *active* users .. there have actually been well over
600,000 accounts created in SDF's lifetime)