Hackers On Planet Earth

How to Fight DDoS Attacks From the Command Line

Michael McMahon

Why are all of our favorite sites starting with “Just a moment…” and “Making sure you’re not a bot!” splash pages now? Since 2024, AI companies appear to be operating aggressive, vibe-coded scrapers behind residential proxy botnets, and sites have typically turned to commercial shields. Michael will share several tools and techniques that he uses as a systems administrator at the Free Software Foundation to keep the sites up on their own infrastructure. He will demo some of his own tools and the tech stack he uses regarding monitoring, firewalls, automation, analytics, ASN lookups/blocking, and geofencing.

Friday 1900 Crystal Ballroom

Michael McMahon is one of two systems administrators currently working at the Free Software Foundation where he solely uses free software to defend the network and keep the sites and services running on self-hosted, bare-metal infrastructure. Since 2019, he has been a pivotal figure in advancing the FSF’s mission, which promotes software freedom for all. His career includes deploying free operating systems onto servers at an OEM, teaching free software in an after-school program, and publicly speaking about emerging topics, notably delivering a talk titled “Practical Steps to Improve Privacy” at HOPE 2020.