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Tech

TTC Union Webpages Down

Posted by Jerrold Litwinenko / April 26, 2008

20080426_unionpage2.jpg
The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113's promotional "We Move Toronto" web page (cached) AND their "Worth a Million" page (cached) are both broken.

White hat hacks, denial of service attacks, too much traffic for the databases to handle, or taken down intentionally by the webmasters? Anyone an SQL geek and care to speculate?

The union's staff page is still up and running.

Discussion

21 Comments

Rai / April 26, 2008 at 04:19 pm
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It's definitely not intentional and I think it'd be hard to tell without knowing more but it's quite possibly an attack. It's also possible it's just too much traffic combined with poor database management.
rotenblog / April 26, 2008 at 05:09 pm
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wow. out of table space, and on SQL Server which supports autogrowth on your table spaces... simply brutal.

if you can't even manage a simple server, how do you expect to run a transit system. FAIL. epic FAIL!
Jerrold / April 26, 2008 at 05:11 pm
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@ rotenblog

In English, please ;)
rotenblog / April 26, 2008 at 05:14 pm
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OMG! have you been to the unions staff page! it's like going back to the 90s! complete with broken links and animated gifs...
rotenblog / April 26, 2008 at 05:17 pm
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@Jerrold

they put too much junk in the trunk, and forgot to wear their elastic waistband.
RandomTangent / April 26, 2008 at 05:34 pm
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The first error, as the text suggests, is saying that the database that stores the dynamic content for that site is out of disk space. It's unlikely that this happened today coincidentally, because the database should be set up to email the administrator with warnings long before this happens (i.e. "Disk is 90% full, clean up") under normal usage patterns. So this *could* be a result of abnormal use, like someone is attacking an unsecured and unlimited size comment form on their site, and they wrote a script that repeatedly puts data in that form, over and over and over again until the disk space on the database is eaten up.

That *could* be what's happening. Just a speculation.
Dan / April 26, 2008 at 06:07 pm
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typo: website is called "we move toronto", not "we more toronto"
dys / April 26, 2008 at 06:27 pm
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"we strand toronto"
Jerrold / April 26, 2008 at 06:39 pm
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@ Dan

Thanks. Fixed.
Carrie / April 26, 2008 at 06:52 pm
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<i>they put too much junk in the trunk, and forgot to wear their elastic waistband.</i>

Awesome!
Brent / April 26, 2008 at 06:56 pm
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White hat hackers are the good guys. Black hat hackers are the bad guys.
Jerrold / April 26, 2008 at 06:59 pm
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@ Brent

I know ;)
person / April 26, 2008 at 07:23 pm
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hahaha ttc I can walk everywhere I don't need you!

heh bob about your slicked back hair style looks to me like a modern day comb-over???
L / April 26, 2008 at 09:24 pm
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"Drivers error"

NO KIDDING, GUYS
SCREWFACE / April 26, 2008 at 10:30 pm
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Is that Xerobank Browser? Looks like someone is trying to hide their interweb movements...
Sheryl / April 27, 2008 at 12:32 am
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<i>they put too much junk in the trunk, and forgot to wear their elastic waistband.</i>

How would you like your internets delivered, rotenblog? XD
Jerrold / April 27, 2008 at 11:01 am
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@ SCREWFACE

No, it's Firefox 2.0.0.14 with the Phoenity theme installed.
Amber Waves / April 27, 2008 at 12:12 pm
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All I know is, I managed to post a feedback comment at We Move Toronto right before worthamillion went down and about an hour later WMT went down too yesterday.

Since WMT indicated that until April 30 all feedback would be posted to WAM, my guess is someone was flooding the comments and such.
Jerrold / April 27, 2008 at 12:31 pm
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We Move Toronto is back online. Worth a Million is still down.
sniderscion / April 27, 2008 at 01:14 pm
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The union site has some pretty good typos; such as this one from a page detailing the terrors of not having a union:
"a worker who has thirty (30) years of service with an Employer would only receive the maximum allowed notice of eight (6) weeks pay if the Employer fires him/her for no work-related reason."
If you can read text it's eight weeks pay; if you only recognize numbers it's 6 weeks pay.
Sadly no mention of the strike that I could find; I was hoping for some good old fashioned tub thumping rhetoric inciting the members to rise up against the demonic public (i.e. their employers) and strand the bastards in the streets.
Fire&Reason / May 7, 2008 at 01:30 pm
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According to ATU Local 113, the Worth a Million web page was taken down on April 30, 2008.

Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 113
812 Wilson Avenue
Downsview, Ontario
M3K 1E5

Phone: (416) 398-5113
Out of Town: 1-800-245-9929
Fax: (416) 398-4978

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