Denial-of-service tool targeting Healthcare.gov site discovered

[The Straight Story]

Denial-of-service tool targeting Healthcare.gov site discovered
Hacktivist software designed to put a strain on struggling Obamacare website.

Researchers have uncovered software available on the Internet designed to overload the struggling Healthcare.gov website with more traffic than it can handle.

"ObamaCare is an affront to the Constitutional rights of the people," a screenshot from the tool, which was acquired by researchers at Arbor Networks, declares. "We HAVE the right to CIVIL disobedience!"

In a blog post published Thursday, Arbor researcher Marc Eisenbarth said there's no evidence Healthcare.gov has been subjected to any significant denial-of-service attacks since going live last month. He also said the limited request rate, the lack of significant distribution, and other features of the tool's underlying code made it unlikely that it could play a significant role in taking down the site. The tool is designed to put a strain on the site by repeatedly alternating requests to the https://www.healthcare.gov and https:www.healthcare.gov/contact-us addresses. If enough requests are made over a short period of time, it can overload some of the "layer 7" applications that the site relies on to make timely responses.

The screenshot below shows some of the inner workings of the unnamed tool.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/new-denial-of-service-attack-aimed-directly-at-healthcare-gov/

[NYC_SKP]

1. This is big news. Recommended. nt

[BlueCaliDem]

2. I've read many posts about people speculating that some bug got into the Healthcare.gov

site, and ... voila! It appears those posters weren't as wrong as some were trying to make them appear.

[Agschmid]

3. Kick.

[NightWatcher]

4. I thought the biggest tool targeting Healthcare.gov was Rush Limpballs.

You mean some people don't want ACA to work?

Of course there are people using bots and other tools to attack ACA. How much money did ACA opponents spend to fight it?

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. I wish I could feign just a little shock

[JoeyT]

6. To the shock of absolutely no one.

There's very little underhanded shit right wingers won't do if they think it will net them just a little bit more power. If you can reasonably imagine them doing it, they're probably either already doing it or they didn't think of it yet.