ThreatExpert being sabotaged?

[TonyKlein]

Someone or something has been uploading Swizzor files for the past couple of hours at a maddening rate It looks like a deliberate attempt to sabotage things by attempting to choke the servers.

I think you''ll want to look into this!

Here's how things have been looking for the past few hours:

[TonyKlein]

The site is still under heavy attack. I have to say I'm pretty amazed at the the lack of reaction. Does anyone from PCTools actually visit this forum??

Here's a screen shot taken just now:

http://images.malwareremoval.com/TonyKlein/Temp/TE2.gif

[mjq424]

Hi
It's the weekend for PC Tools, so very little happens on the forum.
This is a bit worrying though!

[TonyKlein]

Hi
It's the weekend for PC Tools, so very little happens on the forum.
This is a bit worrying though!

Hi there. :)

A lot more than just 'a bit worrying', I would think. The site has effectively been incapacitated. :p

Some action has been initiated behind the scenes, and various PCTools folks should have emails waiting for them once they fire up their compters, but I agree in that this is indeed a most unfortunate moment in time to get hit...

[TonyKlein]

I filled out the TE contact form, and this morning there was a response:


Thank you for your email - we really appreciate that you are informing us on the problem.

In spite of the large volume of malware it is currently processing, ThreatExpert is still operational and provides an accurate and timely response. Large volume is a not a problem as ThreatExpert has a distributed architecture to hold the load like that - that's a normal operational mode, actually ;)

Thanks for your help!

Sergei Shevchenko, ThreatExpert team.

So if I read that correctly, the fact that the site has been under attack for what must be over 36 hours now by a bunch of thugs who've created a loop to repeatedly send the same file in order to attempt to choke the servers amounts to "normal operation: , and they don't see a problem with that nor do they realize it could conceivably reflect badly on their operation, or make it look just a little unprofessional...

Well, as they don't seem to be concerned , who on earth are we to worry? A truly blissfully happy X-mas to everyone at PCTools! http://forums.spywareinfo.com/html/emoticons/devil.gif

[Lusher]

Hi Tony.

Interesting that you noticed. Do you use Threat-expert a lot?

What about other similar alternatives like Anubis?

[TonyKlein]

Hi Lusher,

Yes, I do regularly use TE, as well as Anubis, incidentally.

The nice thing about TE is that you can actually search the reports for a particular string; that has helped me identify certain unknown files or CLSIDs and/or see them 'in context', so to speak.

[TonyKlein]

A heads-up: since about an hour ago the situation appears to be back to normal. Let's hope it'll stay that way. :)

[TonyKlein]

The flow of reports has been rather erratic for a day or so now. At the moment of posting not a single report has been added for about 10 hours... ::confused: