From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 94 22:18:32 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re:  slow.penet.fi
Message-ID: <199404200519.WAA07442@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Afabbro quotes someone in Finland saying, re anon.penet.fi:
>   Some users have flooded the server with hundreds and hundreds of messages.
> That slows the server down greatly (posting and e-mailing times up to 3 days).
> Some messages might have even disappeared because these hundreds of messages
> fill up the diskspace and there is no more room for new messages.

I wonder if this could be a concerted denial-of-service attack.  Julf's
remailer has had the highest profile of any, and he certainly has his share
of enemies.  Maybe somebody figured it was easy to shove a few thousand
messages a day his way.  This makes the server slower and less convenient for
others to use, as well as putting an extra load on the trans-Atlantic links
just for anonymous messages.  It also could cost someone some money which
could be blamed on Penet.  This could be an attractive strategy for an enemy
of anonymity.

Hal