Church and State blog: Church and State: Are we back to full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks lasting for as long as 54 hours a time? (WITH UPDATE 18/4/2020)

Monday, February 10, 2020

Church and State: Are we back to full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks lasting for as long as 54 hours a time? (WITH UPDATE 18/4/2020)

Our Church and State website has no less than 59 Nobel Laureates on it despite the never-ending assault on our email; see paragraph 2 of this blog's sidebar under "Church and State" (updated today).

Church and State under a full DDoS attack.

These three recorded blocks from 10 February are taken from my latest blog post on site blocks (link provided below). They include the previous full DDoS attack that lasted two hours.

2,466th 10 February 2020, 12.02am
2,467th 10 February 2020, 12.25pm
----------------------------------------------
29th full DDoS attack
2 hours
From 10/2 12.25pm – 2.21pm
----------------------------------------------
2,468th 10 February 2020, 3.15pm

Update Summation 18 April 2020

Two months later (as of 18 April at 11.54pm) there have been 2,535 blocks on access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016, plus 29 full DDoS attacks lasting for as long as 54 hours a time.* 89 blocks in 2016, 871 blocks in 2017, 516 blocks in 2018, 957 blocks plus 28 full DDoS attacks in 2019, and 102 blocks plus 1 full DDoS attack in 2020. 50 blocks in July 2019, the same month as Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations. 18 blocks this month, 8 blocks this week, and 1 block today. This month also includes the continuation of the first half of a double administrative block from Facebook (the first half lasting 353 days and counting, and the second half lasting 77 days).

89 blocks 2016
871 blocks 2017
516 blocks 2018
957 blocks 2019
- May: 184 blocks plus 5 full DDoS attacks
- September: 16 blocks plus 1 full DDoS attack
- October: 57 blocks plus 9 full DDoS attacks
- November: 104 blocks plus 10 full DDoS attacks
- December: 90 blocks plus 3 full DDoS attacks
102 blocks 2020
- January: 23 blocks
- February: 41 blocks plus 1 full DDoS attack
- March: 20 blocks
- April: 18 blocks

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* Since the week commencing 27 October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to four-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

18 May 2019: SITE BLOCKS: Are full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to be the new norm? SiteGound is paid $1,000 per year to host Church and State and manage the server (WITH UPDATE 18/4/2020: re 2,535th block since 26 July 2016)

This is what the latest full DDoS attack this afternoon looked like in my SiteGround account:

In re DDoS attacks

Paragraph 39 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

39. The Applicant and his wife's Church and State website has been removed from the Internet on five distinct occasions. For example, in May 2012, Just Host, the domain's then registrar, changed the domain name server records without permission and disabled the Applicant's wife's facility to correct these records herself. Shortly after the domain was transferred to SiteGround's registrar, the site was vandalised to such an extent that the Applicant's wife was advised by the WordPress theme developer to start afresh with a new theme. N4CM Chairman Dr. Stephen D. Mumford has been paying for the hosting of the Church and State website since December 2010. Nonetheless, the site continues to be attacked in various ways, such as with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. In October 2015, SiteGround responded: "We have blocked the network that is being used by that user agent and now the server should remain working normally." There have subsequently been 2,117 recorded blocks on access to the Church and State since July 2016; and unprecedentedly, the site was the target of five full DDoS attacks in May 2019 lasting for as long as 24 hours at a time. SiteGround is paid $1,000 per year to host the site and manage the server.

12 July 2019: Threat to life: Updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's highlighted

UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' Edd Doerr (1930-2020), (then) President, Americans for Religious Liberty

http://churchandstate.org.uk/about/

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Monday, February 10, 2020

Church and State: Are we back to full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks lasting for as long as 54 hours a time? (WITH UPDATE 18/4/2020)

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