Bonum Certa Men Certa

Techrights Under Attack Again, Shortly After Important EPO Articles

Benoit Battistelli



Summary: Techrights highlights a pattern that is months old; Site faces availability issues shortly after reports about the European Patent Office and its abuses

TODAY we published three very important articles regarding the EPO. It didn't take more than an hour for the site to become inaccessible. Cracking attempts against Techrights sharply rose to a pace of ~1 per second (it's usually quite bad, but not that bad) and Techrights was down due to exhausted resources, as is so often the case (for 6 months now) after writing major reports about EPO scandals. Investigation ensued (we still study the damage and the cause) and we are back online. Risk of brute-force SSH attacks on Techrights had already been mitigated by restriction to key-only authorisation, but that did not protect from DDOS attacks with large enough IP addresses pool. There is a reason and motivation, but we don't know whose. Correlations (in timing and more) have inspired mere guesses over the past 6 months. We have been taking comprehensive site backups specifically before publishing key (exclusive) articles about the EPO; we didn't do this in our entire history as a public site (which is almost a decade old). With mass protests, ugly coverups, violations of the law and resignations already happening there is a lot at stake here. DDOS attacks against us started around the same time the series about the EPO began, lasting months and sometimes persevering for weeks at a time (causing downtime or limited availability). I lost many nights of sleep over it. So has my wife.



"The EPO is already being sued by staff, which forced it (in The Hague) to stop censoring (essentially attacking) the voice of staff."We already have it confirmed that EPO is in such as sordid mess that there are censorship attacks (by the EPO's management) on EPO staff. This is the same management which is misusing taxpayers' money, paying for fake coverage to glorify EPO management in respected publications such as the New Scientist. The decision from the EPO to plant 'articles'/'testimonies' (for a fee!) will backfire badly on Benoît Battistelli. As one IPKat comment put it: "As we read the various comments from the anonymice, keep in mind, dear Reader, that a comment that gives every appearance of coming from an EPO Examiner might in fact be disinformation coming from a crony of the President. And vice versa, of course."

The EPO is already being sued by staff, which forced it (in The Hague) to stop censoring (essentially attacking) the voice of staff. This never prevented staff from accessing information from home (after work). "I think that's the begining [sic.] of the end of Battistelli reign," says a comment from the past hour, "it will create a scandal bigger that the Edith Cresson scandal" (context here).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia Fortify Their Digital Border With GNU/Linux
This month's data from statCounter is particularly interesting near the Baltic Sea
Richard Stallman Gives Public Talk at Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic
"For programs that you could run, and for network services that could do your own computing, under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?"
Another Wave of Microsoft Layoffs Comes Shortly. Microsoft Propaganda Sites and Slopforms Powered by Microsoft LLMs Already Spew Out Face-Saving Nonsense.
Based on last month's leak, some very extensive layoffs are now imminent [...] Perhaps we can expect a lot of noise, some of it spewed out by bots, to distract from or belittle the impending mass layoffs
Ubuntu Becomes Microsoft GitHub, Based on Decision Made by British Army Officer
You're hopeless, Canonical
Windows and Microsoft Causing Serious Data Breaches, Media Rushes to Blame That on "Linux" Somehow
While selling us some rusty old propaganda about how moving to Microsoft GitHub (Rust) will improve security
Making Site Archives More Easily Accessible (Approaching 50,000 Blog Posts)
Efforts to censor us have always backfired badly
 
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part III: No More Media Lawsuits From Brett Wilson LLP This Year, One Can Only Guess Why
People leak a lot of material to Techrights because they know, based on the track record, that the sources will be protected and whatever gets published will stay online, in full, no matter how stubborn an effort (even lawsuits and blackmail) will be sent its way
Gemini Links 07/05/2025: Adopting GrapheneOS, Further Enshittification of Flickr
Links for the day
Links 07/05/2025: CISA Gutted, Debt-Saddled (Likely Insolvent) 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Faking Its Financial State Again
Links for the day
The European Patent Office (EPO) Has a Very Profound Corruption Issue, Far More Urgent an Issue Than Pronouns
a rather long document
Today We Turn 18.5
The eighteenth "and a half" anniversary
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 06, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 06, 2025
Microsoft Finally Admits That XBox is ****
In this case, "enshittification" is an understatement
Slopwatch: Microsoft Slop, Anti-Linux Slop, and IBM Marketing Itself as a Slop Company
Microsoft-controlled LLM spewing out garbage about "Linux"
Links 06/05/2025: Microsoft's Assassination of Skype After Years of Failure, Slop Hallucinations Are Getting Worse
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2025: Changing Places and StarGrid for PalmOS
Links for the day
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part II: Hiding Behind Lawyers and Barristers Who Lack Standards so as to Engage in Classic Corporate Extortion
They're trying to scare people and they misuse their licence to operate
Links 06/05/2025: LLMs/Chatbots Attract More Scrutiny (Getting Worse Over Time), PwC Has Many Layoffs
Links for the day
Thanks for listening. How can this Morse feed be further improved?
Right now any and all feedback on the audio would be helpful
statCounter: Bing's Market Share Lower Right Now Than It Was When LLM Hype Began (With "Bing Chat")
If anybody gains at Google's expense in search, it is BRICS' alternatives such as Yandex
Gemini Links 06/05/2025: Failure and Proxmox Cluster
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 05, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, May 05, 2025
Weaponisation of For-Profit Dockets - Part I: Hiding Behind Lawyers (or Guns for Hire) After Abusing Many People and Even Strangling Women While Microsoft Paid Salaries
This whole thing is very typical of the Microsoft and Bill Gates mindset
From EPO to "MAGA Regime": A Shift Away From Reality to Fake News and False Metrics
Disbelief in itself isn't a bad thing; but the problem is that people are taught to believe rich people in suits more than they believe others
Skype is Officially Dead Today and This is Why People Should Use Free Software Instead (Goodbye, Microsoft)
It's also a good reminder of why people should move to GNU/Linux
'Simple Articles' in MyGemini Just One of Many New 'Sites' in Geminispace
Geminispace has grown fast lately; it's turning 6 next month
Links 05/05/2025: TikTok Still a Romanian Woe/Foe, Signal Perils Showing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: Debian and GNOME and a "Welcome to Simple Articles"
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: US Economy Shrinks, US Presidency Spreading Deepfakes
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2025: Breaches, Environment, and Conflicts
Links for the day
SUSE the Company Now Uses LLM Slop to 'Write' Its Blog, What Does That Tell Us About SUSE?
There are many giveaways
Richard Stallman is in Alicante Today to Give a Talk, Czech Republic in Two Days (Wednesday)
Of course he can deliver the talk in Spanish
Gemini Links 05/05/2025: XL Bullies and Luddites
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 04, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, May 04, 2025