SOPA Could Create New Denial of Service Attack, Powered by Law not Botnets

The United States House of Representatives is considering the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which has been criticized by companies like Google, Facebook, and Mozilla, as well as organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. CloudFlare shares these concerns but also sees a significant risk: SOPA's proposed restrictions could be used to launch a new form of denial-of-service attack that may be difficult to defend against. The current Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) outlines procedures for network providers like CloudFlare when receiving copyright complaints, but there has been an increase in abusive DMCA requests from attackers. SOPA could remove the technical requirement for launching a DDoS attack and enable purely legal attacks with carefully crafted letters or forged subpoenas. While acknowledging the need for copyright protections online, new laws like SOPA must be carefully crafted to avoid creating substantial security risks.