I spent Friday, June 11 at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where they hosted a roundtable discussion/workshop on denial of service attacks/distributed denial of service attacks (DoS/DDoS attacks).

It was a fascinating discussion about some of the methods that certain governments and other groups are using to suppress free expression around the world. Rather than (or in addition to) standard methods such as filtering/blocking websites, the sites are crippled, sometimes permanently, by coordinated external attacks, such as overwhelming the site with enormous quantities of communications requests. The discussion was informed by a diverse multi-stakeholder group. Participants included human rights activists and independent news platforms such as Irawaddy from Burma, The Caucasian Knot from Eastern Europe and Boxun News from China, as well as organizations that help to protect against DDos attacks such as Team Cymru.

For a description of Irawaddy’s experience with a DDoS attack, see this article from the Wall Street Journal.

The Berkman Center is building a map of DDoS attacks and is leading an effort to develop a set of response strategies that can be used by human rights and independent media sites that find themselves under attack, and Friday’s discussion will help to inform their final results. It was a fantastic learning opportunity, as well as a chance to find ways that Yahoo! and the BHRP can continue to address this issue on behalf of our users.

To learn more about this effort, contact the Berkman Center.