Alessio Pennasilico

Title: Bakeca.it DDoS: How evil forces have been defeated.

Bio:
Mr. Alessio L.R. Pennasilico, a.k.a. mayhem, 30 years, lives and works in Verona (Italy) as a Security Evangelist for Alba S.T. s.r.l.

His personal and working interests are into Information Technology, focusing on security issues, OpenSource and Digital Rights. That’s why he soon became a member of many independent organizations, such as AIPSI(ISSA Italian chapter), AIP, CLUSIT, Italian Linux Society, OpenBeer, VoIPSA, Metro Olografix, Sikurezza.org, ISAC-IT, Recursiva.org, Thawte, ISECOM’s Hacker’s Profiling Project (HPP), Critical Infrastructures Security Test and Analysis Lab (CrISTAL) and many LUGs.

He is usually invited as a speaker at most of the national events such as IT Underground, Hack in the Box, CCC, Confidence, SMAU, Infosecurity, E-privacy, Linux Day, OpenCon, OpenEXP, ESC and the italian HackMeeting. Alessio also holds workshops in secondary schools and italian universities, with the aim of spreading the culture for an aware use of nowaday’s technology.

Abstract:
DDoS attacks are becoming even more frequent. Companies, governments, anyone can be hit by those disruptive actions: the real problem is that so often is very difficult to mitigate the attack. Countermeasures are not always applicable, often very expensive. This case history shows up how a small company (less than 100 employees) can be the target of a very sophisticated attack. The incredible side of the story is how this small company, without any help from the ISP, was able to eact and increase the number of customers, instead of loosing them. A story of an attack run 24/7 or several days, mitigated with “cheap” hw/sw solution and how full-disclosure saved the company image.