Communication during an emergency

[theymos]

Any serious attacker is going to take down this forum, Freenode, and any other IRC network we use while he attacks Bitcoin. This will seriously disrupt efforts to fix the problem.

For example, if #bitcoin-dev and the forum had not been available during the overflow incident, lfm (IIRC) would have had to report the bug directly to someone via email. Maybe he would have waited hours/days to do this. There was also rapid-fire collaboration on #bitcoin-dev to create a fix and spread the word.

Some alternative to #bitcoin-dev needs to be prepared for emergencies like the overflow incident, when #bitcoin-dev might not be available. IRC-like real-time communication would be ideal, as it allows quick collaboration.

Initially I was thinking that in case of a Freenode outage, we could get several people to temporarily donate servers to the LFnet IRC network and relocate there. However, laszlo has told me that IRC is inherently weak to denial of service attacks and is unsuitable.

Other methods:
- This forum could certainly be taken down easily, so it is not suitable.
- I'm not sure how easy the mailing list is to take down. My guess is that flooding would kill it pretty easily. Maybe an invite-only or moderated list would be more resilient. If Bitcoin gets very big, it might become economical for the attacker to take down or corrupt SourceForge.
- I think Usenet is pretty resilient, but can groups be easily flooded into oblivion?
- Freenet would work nicely, but it's too difficult to use. Requiring it would prevent most people from joining the discussion. (I don't even run it any more, since it takes up too many resources.)
- Tor/I2P hidden services are worse than non-anonymized centralized services for DoS-resistance.

Are there any alternatives to IRC that can withstand powerful DDoS attacks and spamming?

[ctoon6]

google plus + ?

although if you are looking for something that does not have centralization you can not control, your out of luck afaik.

WASTE again
mumble (text and voice)

could be of use

edit:
µChat
twitter
XMPP

[jackjack]

G+ is a good idea because there's something like chatrooms I believe
During an emergency situation, centralization is not a problem as long as it can't be ddos'd. Which is nearly impossible with Google

[memvola]

- Freenet would work nicely, but it's too difficult to use. Requiring it would prevent most people from joining the discussion. (I don't even run it any more, since it takes up too many resources.)

Freenet is the best choice there is, since it's its main purpose. If you designate the meeting place as a freetalk channel, it really isn't a pain to set up (AFAIK it comes with the default installation now). Freesites are extremely resilient as well...

On the other hand, you need to set it up. If that's too much of a demand, big enough social networking services seem like an option. But what if the attacker has means to intimidate them?