document_title: Denial-of-service attack

question_text: to launch a distributed denial of service (ddos) attack an attacker often uses

question_tokens: to launch a distributed denial of service ( ddos ) attack an attacker often uses

root

text: Denial-of-service attack

text: History[edit]

text: This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2017)

tag: table

text: Court testimony shows that the first demonstration of DoS attack was made by Khan C. Smith in 1997 during a DEF CON event disrupting Internet access to the Las Vegas Strip for over an hour and the release of sample code during the event led to the online attack of Sprint, EarthLink, E-Trade, and other major corporations in the year to follow.[6]

tag: p

text: Types[edit]

text: Denial-of-service attacks are characterized by an explicit attempt by attackers to prevent legitimate users of a service from using that service. In a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, the incoming traffic flooding the victim originates from many different sources – potentially hundreds of thousands or more. This effectively makes it impossible to stop the attack simply by blocking a single IP address; plus, it is very difficult to distinguish legitimate user traffic from attack traffic when spread across so many points of origin. There are two general forms of DoS attacks: those that crash services and those that flood services. The most serious attacks are distributed.[7] Many attacks involve forging of IP sender addresses (IP address spoofing) so that the location of the attacking machines cannot easily be identified and so that the attack cannot be easily defeated using ingress filtering.

text: Distributed DoS[edit]

text: A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) is a cyber-attack where the perpetrator uses more than one unique IP address, often thousands of them. The scale of DDoS attacks has continued to rise over recent years, by 2016 exceeding a terabit per second.[8] [9]

text: Application layer attacks[edit]

text: An application layer DDoS attack (sometimes referred to as layer 7 DDoS attack) is a form of DDoS attack where attackers target the application layer of the OSI model.[10][11] The attack over-exercises specific functions or features of a website with the intention to disable those functions or features. This application-layer attack is different from an entire network attack, and is often used against financial institutions to distract IT and security personnel from security breaches.[12] As of 2013, application layer DDoS attacks represent 20% of all DDoS attacks.[13] According to research by the company Akamai, there have been "51 percent more application layer attacks" from Q4 2013 to Q4 2014 and "16 percent more" from Q3 2014 over Q4 2014.[14]

text: Application layer[edit]

text: The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model (ISO/IEC 7498-1) is a conceptual model that characterizes and standardizes the internal functions of a communication system by partitioning it into abstraction layers. The model is a product of the Open Systems Interconnection project at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The model groups similar communication functions into one of seven logical layers. A layer serves the layer above it and is served by the layer below it. For example, a layer that provides error-free communications across a network provides the path needed by applications above it, while it calls the next lower layer to send and receive packets that make up the contents of that path. Two instances at one layer are connected by a horizontal connection on that layer.

text: In the OSI model, the definition of its application layer is narrower in scope. The OSI model defines the application layer as being the user interface. The OSI application layer is responsible for displaying data and images to the user in a human-recognizable format and to interface with the presentation layer below it.

text: Method of attack[edit]

text: An application layer DDoS attack is done mainly for specific targeted purposes, including disrupting transactions and access to databases. It requires less resources and often accompanies network layer attacks.[15] An attack is disguised to look like legitimate traffic, except it targets specific application packets.[13] The attack on the application layer can disrupt services such as the retrieval of information or search function[13] as well as web browser function, email services and photo applications. In order to be deemed a distributed denial of service attack, more than around 3–5 nodes on different networks should be used; using fewer than 3–5 nodes qualifies as a Denial-of-service attack and not a DDoS.[11][16]

text: Defending application layer DDoS attacks[edit]

text: Defending against an application layer DDoS attack requires DDoS mitigation. Success of mitigation requires correctly identifying incoming traffic to separate human traffic from human-like bots and hijacked browsers.

text: Advanced persistent DoS[edit]

text: An advanced persistent DoS (APDoS) is more likely to be perpetrated by an advanced persistent threat (APT): actors who are well-resourced, exceptionally skilled and have access to substantial commercial grade computer resources and capacity. APDoS attacks represent a clear and emerging threat needing specialised monitoring and incident response services and the defensive capabilities of specialised DDoS mitigation service providers.

text: This type of attack involves massive network layer DDoS attacks through to focused application layer (HTTP) floods, followed by repeated (at varying intervals) SQLi and XSS attacks.[17][citation needed] Typically, the perpetrators can simultaneously use from 2 to 5 attack vectors involving up to several tens of millions of requests per second, often accompanied by large SYN floods that can not only attack the victim but also any service provider implementing any sort of managed DDoS mitigation capability. These attacks can persist for several weeks- the longest continuous period noted so far lasted 38 days. This APDoS attack involved approximately 50+ petabits (50,000+ terabits) of malicious traffic.

text: Attackers in this scenario may (or often will) tactically switch between several targets to create a diversion to evade defensive DDoS countermeasures but all the while eventually concentrating the main thrust of the attack onto a single victim. In this scenario, threat actors with continuous access to several very powerful network resources are capable of sustaining a prolonged campaign generating enormous levels of un-amplified DDoS traffic.

text: APDoS attacks are characterised by:

text:
advanced reconnaissance (pre-attack OSINT and extensive decoyed scanning crafted to evade detection over long periods)
tactical execution (attack with a primary and secondary victims but focus is on primary)
explicit motivation (a calculated end game/goal target)
large computing capacity (access to substantial computer power and network bandwidth resources)
simultaneous multi-threaded OSI layer attacks (sophisticated tools operating at layers 3 through 7)
persistence over extended periods (utilising all the above into a concerted, well managed attack across a range of targets[18]).

tag: ul

text: Denial-of-service as a service[edit]

text: Some vendors provide so-called "booter" or "stresser" services, which have simple web-based front ends, and accept payment over the web. Marketed and promoted as stress-testing tools, they can be used to perform unauthorized denial-of-service attacks, and allow technically unsophisticated attackers access to sophisticated attack tools without the need for the attacker to understand their use.[19]

text: Symptoms[edit]

text: The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has identified symptoms of a denial-of-service attack to include:[20]

text:
unusually slow network performance (opening files or accessing web sites)
unavailability of a particular web site
inability to access any web site
dramatic increase in the number of spam emails received (this type of DoS attack is considered an e-mail bomb).

text: Additional symptoms may include:

text:
disconnection of a wireless or wired internet connection
long-term denial of access to the web or any internet services.

text: If the attack is conducted on a sufficiently large scale, entire geographical regions of Internet connectivity can be compromised without the attacker's knowledge or intent by incorrectly configured or flimsy network infrastructure equipment.

text: Attack techniques[edit]

text: A wide array of programs are used to launch DoS-attacks.

text: Attack tools[edit]

text: In cases such as MyDoom the tools are embedded in malware, and launch their attacks without the knowledge of the system owner. Stacheldraht is a classic example of a DDoS tool. It utilizes a layered structure where the attacker uses a client program to connect to handlers, which are compromised systems that issue commands to the zombie agents, which in turn facilitate the DDoS attack. Agents are compromised via the handlers by the attacker, using automated routines to exploit vulnerabilities in programs that accept remote connections running on the targeted remote hosts. Each handler can control up to a thousand agents.[21]

text: In other cases a machine may become part of a DDoS attack with the owner's consent, for example, in Operation Payback, organized by the group Anonymous. The LOIC has typically been used in this way. Along with HOIC a wide variety of DDoS tools are available today, including paid and free versions, with different features available. There is an underground market for these in hacker related forums and IRC channels.

text: UK's GCHQ has tools built for DDoS, named PREDATORS FACE and ROLLING THUNDER.[22]

text: Application-layer floods[edit]

text: Various DoS-causing exploits such as buffer overflow can cause server-running software to get confused and fill the disk space or consume all available memory or CPU time.

text: Other kinds of DoS rely primarily on brute force, flooding the target with an overwhelming flux of packets, oversaturating its connection bandwidth or depleting the target's system resources. Bandwidth-saturating floods rely on the attacker having higher bandwidth available than the victim; a common way of achieving this today is via distributed denial-of-service, employing a botnet. Another target of DDoS attacks may be to produce added costs for the application operator, when the latter uses resources based on Cloud Computing. In this case normally application used resources are tied to a needed Quality of Service level (e.g. responses should be less than 200 ms) and this rule is usually linked to automated software (e.g. Amazon CloudWatch[23]) to raise more virtual resources from the provider in order to meet the defined QoS levels for the increased requests.The main incentive behind such attacks may be to drive the application owner to raise the elasticity levels in order to handle the increased application traffic, in order to cause financial losses or force them to become less competitive. Other floods may use specific packet types or connection requests to saturate finite resources by, for example, occupying the maximum number of open connections or filling the victim's disk space with logs.

text: A "banana attack" is another particular type of DoS. It involves redirecting outgoing messages from the client back onto the client, preventing outside access, as well as flooding the client with the sent packets. A LAND attack is of this type.

text: An attacker with shell-level access to a victim's computer may slow it until it is unusable or crash it by using a fork bomb.

text: A kind of application-level DoS attack is XDoS (or XML DoS) which can be controlled by modern web application firewalls (WAFs).

text: Degradation-of-service attacks[edit]

text: "Pulsing" zombies are compromised computers that are directed to launch intermittent and short-lived floodings of victim websites with the intent of merely slowing it rather than crashing it. This type of attack, referred to as "degradation-of-service" rather than "denial-of-service", can be more difficult to detect than regular zombie invasions and can disrupt and hamper connection to websites for prolonged periods of time, potentially causing more disruption than concentrated floods.[24][25] Exposure of degradation-of-service attacks is complicated further by the matter of discerning whether the server is really being attacked or under normal traffic loads.[26]

text: Denial-of-service Level II[edit]

text: The goal of DoS L2 (possibly DDoS) attack is to cause a launching of a defense mechanism which blocks the network segment from which the attack originated. In case of distributed attack or IP header modification (that depends on the kind of security behavior) it will fully block the attacked network from the Internet, but without system crash.[17][citation needed]

text: Distributed DoS attack[edit]

text: A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack occurs when multiple systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers.[7] Such an attack is often the result of multiple compromised systems (for example, a botnet) flooding the targeted system with traffic. A botnet is a network of zombie computers programmed to receive commands without the owners' knowledge.[27] When a server is overloaded with connections, new connections can no longer be accepted. The major advantages to an attacker of using a distributed denial-of-service attack are that multiple machines can generate more attack traffic than one machine, multiple attack machines are harder to turn off than one attack machine, and that the behavior of each attack machine can be stealthier, making it harder to track and shut down. These attacker advantages cause challenges for defense mechanisms. For example, merely purchasing more incoming bandwidth than the current volume of the attack might not help, because the attacker might be able to simply add more attack machines. This, after all, will end up completely crashing a website for periods of time.

text: Malware can carry DDoS attack mechanisms; one of the better-known examples of this was MyDoom. Its DoS mechanism was triggered on a specific date and time. This type of DDoS involved hardcoding the target IP address prior to release of the malware and no further interaction was necessary to launch the attack.

text: A system may also be compromised with a trojan, allowing the attacker to download a zombie agent, or the trojan may contain one. Attackers can also break into systems using automated tools that exploit flaws in programs that listen for connections from remote hosts. This scenario primarily concerns systems acting as servers on the web. Stacheldraht is a classic example of a DDoS tool. It utilizes a layered structure where the attacker uses a client program to connect to handlers, which are compromised systems that issue commands to the zombie agents, which in turn facilitate the DDoS attack. Agents are compromised via the handlers by the attacker, using automated routines to exploit vulnerabilities in programs that accept remote connections running on the targeted remote hosts. Each handler can control up to a thousand agents.[21] In some cases a machine may become part of a DDoS attack with the owner's consent, for example, in Operation Payback, organized by the group Anonymous. These attacks can use different types of internet packets such as: TCP, UDP, ICMP etc.

text: These collections of systems compromisers are known as botnets / rootservers. DDoS tools like Stacheldraht still use classic DoS attack methods centered on IP spoofing and amplification like smurf attacks and fraggle attacks (these are also known as bandwidth consumption attacks). SYN floods (also known as resource starvation attacks) may also be used. Newer tools can use DNS servers for DoS purposes. Unlike MyDoom's DDoS mechanism, botnets can be turned against any IP address. Script kiddies use them to deny the availability of well known websites to legitimate users.[28] More sophisticated attackers use DDoS tools for the purposes of extortion – even against their business rivals.[29]

text: Simple attacks such as SYN floods may appear with a wide range of source IP addresses, giving the appearance of a well distributed DoS. These flood attacks do not require completion of the TCP three way handshake and attempt to exhaust the destination SYN queue or the server bandwidth. Because the source IP addresses can be trivially spoofed, an attack could come from a limited set of sources, or may even originate from a single host. Stack enhancements such as syn cookies may be effective mitigation against SYN queue flooding, however complete bandwidth exhaustion may require involvement.[further explanation needed]

text: If an attacker mounts an attack from a single host it would be classified as a DoS attack. In fact, any attack against availability would be classed as a denial-of-service attack. On the other hand, if an attacker uses many systems to simultaneously launch attacks against a remote host, this would be classified as a DDoS attack.

text: It has been reported that there are new attacks from internet of things which have been involved in denial of service attacks. [30] In one noted attack that was made peaked at around 20,000 requests per second which came from around 900 CCTV cameras. [31]

text: DDoS extortion[edit]

text: In 2015, DDoS botnets such as DD4BC grew in prominence, taking aim at financial institutions.[32] Cyber-extortionists typically begin with a low-level attack and a warning that a larger attack will be carried out if a ransom is not paid in Bitcoin.[33] Security experts recommend targeted websites to not pay the ransom. The attackers tend to get into an extended extortion scheme once they recognize that the target is ready to pay.[34]

text: HTTP POST DoS attack[edit]

text: First discovered in 2009, the HTTP POST attack sends a complete, legitimate HTTP POST header, which includes a 'Content-Length' field to specify the size of the message body to follow. However, the attacker then proceeds to send the actual message body at an extremely slow rate (e.g. 1 byte/110 seconds). Due to the entire message being correct and complete, the target server will attempt to obey the 'Content-Length' field in the header, and wait for the entire body of the message to be transmitted, which can take a very long time. The attacker establishes hundreds or even thousands of such connections, until all resources for incoming connections on the server (the victim) are used up, hence making any further (including legitimate) connections impossible until all data has been sent. It is notable that unlike many other (D)DoS attacks, which try to subdue the server by overloading its network or CPU, a HTTP POST attack targets the logical resources of the victim, which means the victim would still have enough network bandwidth and processing power to operate.[35] Further combined with the fact that Apache will, by default, accept requests up to 2GB in size, this attack can be particularly powerful. HTTP POST attacks are difficult to differentiate from legitimate connections, and are therefore able to bypass some protection systems. OWASP, an open source web application security project, has released a testing tool to test the security of servers against this type of attacks.

text: Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) flood[edit]

text: A smurf attack relies on misconfigured network devices that allow packets to be sent to all computer hosts on a particular network via the broadcast address of the network, rather than a specific machine. The attacker will send large numbers of IP packets with the source address faked to appear to be the address of the victim. The network's bandwidth is quickly used up, preventing legitimate packets from getting through to their destination.[36]

text: Ping flood is based on sending the victim an overwhelming number of ping packets, usually using the "ping" command from Unix-like hosts (the -t flag on Windows systems is much less capable of overwhelming a target, also the -l (size) flag does not allow sent packet size greater than 65500 in Windows). It is very simple to launch, the primary requirement being access to greater bandwidth than the victim.

text: Ping of death is based on sending the victim a malformed ping packet, which will lead to a system crash on a vulnerable system.

text: The BlackNurse attack is an example of an attack taking advantage of the required Destination Port Unreachable ICMP packets.

text: Nuke[edit]

text: A Nuke is an old denial-of-service attack against computer networks consisting of fragmented or otherwise invalid ICMP packets sent to the target, achieved by using a modified ping utility to repeatedly send this corrupt data, thus slowing down the affected computer until it comes to a complete stop.

text: A specific example of a nuke attack that gained some prominence is the WinNuke, which exploited the vulnerability in the NetBIOS handler in Windows 95. A string of out-of-band data was sent to TCP port 139 of the victim's machine, causing it to lock up and display a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).

text: Peer-to-peer attacks[edit]

text: Attackers have found a way to exploit a number of bugs in peer-to-peer servers to initiate DDoS attacks. The most aggressive of these peer-to-peer-DDoS attacks exploits DC++. With peer-to-peer there is no botnet and the attacker does not have to communicate with the clients it subverts. Instead, the attacker acts as a "puppet master," instructing clients of large peer-to-peer file sharing hubs to disconnect from their peer-to-peer network and to connect to the victim's website instead.[37][38][39]

text: Permanent denial-of-service attacks[edit]

text: Permanent denial-of-service (PDoS), also known loosely as phlashing,[40] is an attack that damages a system so badly that it requires replacement or reinstallation of hardware.[41] Unlike the distributed denial-of-service attack, a PDoS attack exploits security flaws which allow remote administration on the management interfaces of the victim's hardware, such as routers, printers, or other networking hardware. The attacker uses these vulnerabilities to replace a device's firmware with a modified, corrupt, or defective firmware image—a process which when done legitimately is known as flashing. This therefore "bricks" the device, rendering it unusable for its original purpose until it can be repaired or replaced.

text: The PDoS is a pure hardware targeted attack which can be much faster and requires fewer resources than using a botnet or a root/vserver in a DDoS attack. Because of these features, and the potential and high probability of security exploits on Network Enabled Embedded Devices (NEEDs), this technique has come to the attention of numerous hacking communities.

text: PhlashDance is a tool created by Rich Smith (an employee of Hewlett-Packard's Systems Security Lab) used to detect and demonstrate PDoS vulnerabilities at the 2008 EUSecWest Applied Security Conference in London.[42]

text: Reflected / spoofed attack[edit]

text: A distributed denial-of-service attack may involve sending forged requests of some type to a very large number of computers that will reply to the requests. Using Internet Protocol address spoofing, the source address is set to that of the targeted victim, which means all the replies will go to (and flood) the target. (This reflected attack form is sometimes called a "DRDOS".[43])

text: ICMP Echo Request attacks (Smurf attack) can be considered one form of reflected attack, as the flooding host(s) send Echo Requests to the broadcast addresses of mis-configured networks, thereby enticing hosts to send Echo Reply packets to the victim. Some early DDoS programs implemented a distributed form of this attack.

text: Amplification[edit]

text: Amplification attacks are used to magnify the bandwidth that is sent to a victim. This is typically done through publicly accessible DNS servers that are used to cause congestion on the target system using DNS response traffic. Many services can be exploited to act as reflectors, some harder to block than others.[44] US-CERT have observed that different services implies in different amplification factors, as you can see below:[45]

text:
UDP-based Amplification Attacks

Protocol
Bandwidth Amplification Factor

NTP
556.9

CharGen
358.8

DNS
up to 179 [46]

QOTD
140.3

Quake Network Protocol
63.9

BitTorrent
4.0 - 54.3 [47]

SSDP
30.8

Kad
16.3

SNMPv2
6.3

Steam Protocol
5.5

NetBIOS
3.8

text: DNS amplification attacks involve a new mechanism that increased the amplification effect, using a much larger list of DNS servers than seen earlier. The process typically involves an attacker sending a DNS name look up request to a public DNS server, spoofing the source IP address of the targeted victim. The attacker tries to request as much zone information as possible, thus amplifying the DNS record response that is sent to the targeted victim. Since the size of the request is significantly smaller than the response, the attacker is easily able to increase the amount of traffic directed at the target.[48][49] SNMP and NTP can also be exploited as reflector in an amplification attack.

text: An example of an amplified DDoS attack through NTP is through a command called monlist, which sends the details of the last 600 people who have requested the time from that computer back to the requester. A small request to this time server can be sent using a spoofed source IP address of some victim, which results in 556.9 times the amount of data that was requested back to the victim. This becomes amplified when using botnets that all send requests with the same spoofed IP source, which will send a massive amount of data back to the victim.

text: It is very difficult to defend against these types of attacks because the response data is coming from legitimate servers. These attack requests are also sent through UDP, which does not require a connection to the server. This means that the source IP is not verified when a request is received by the server. In order to bring awareness of these vulnerabilities, campaigns have been started that are dedicated to finding amplification vectors which has led to people fixing their resolvers or having the resolvers shut down completely.

text: R-U-Dead-Yet? (RUDY)[edit]

text: RUDY attack targets web applications by starvation of available sessions on the web server. Much like Slowloris, RUDY keeps sessions at halt using never-ending POST transmissions and sending an arbitrarily large content-length header value.

text: Shrew attack[edit]

text: The shrew attack is a denial-of-service attack on the Transmission Control Protocol. It uses short synchronized bursts of traffic to disrupt TCP connections on the same link, by exploiting a weakness in TCP's retransmission timeout mechanism.[50]

text: Slow Read attack[edit]

text: A slow read attack sends legitimate application layer requests, but reads responses very slowly, thus trying to exhaust the server's connection pool. It is achieved by advertising a very small number for the TCP Receive Window size, and at the same time emptying clients' TCP receive buffer slowly, which causes a very low data flow rate.

text: Sophisticated low-bandwidth Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack[edit]

text: A sophisticated low-bandwidth DDoS attack is a form of DoS that uses less traffic and increases their effectiveness by aiming at a weak point in the victim's system design, i.e., the attacker sends traffic consisting of complicated requests to the system.[51] Essentially, a sophisticated DDoS attack is lower in cost due to its use of less traffic, is smaller in size making it more difficult to identify, and it has the ability to hurt systems which are protected by flow control mechanisms.[51][52]

text: (S)SYN flood[edit]

text: A SYN flood occurs when a host sends a flood of TCP/SYN packets, often with a forged sender address. Each of these packets are handled like a connection request, causing the server to spawn a half-open connection, by sending back a TCP/SYN-ACK packet (Acknowledge), and waiting for a packet in response from the sender address (response to the ACK Packet). However, because the sender address is forged, the response never comes. These half-open connections saturate the number of available connections the server can make, keeping it from responding to legitimate requests until after the attack ends.[53]

text: Teardrop attacks[edit]

text: A teardrop attack involves sending mangled IP fragments with overlapping, oversized payloads to the target machine. This can crash various operating systems because of a bug in their TCP/IP fragmentation re-assembly code.[54] Windows 3.1x, Windows 95 and Windows NT operating systems, as well as versions of Linux prior to versions 2.0.32 and 2.1.63 are vulnerable to this attack.

text: (Although in September 2009, a vulnerability in Windows Vista was referred to as a "teardrop attack", this targeted SMB2 which is a higher layer than the TCP packets that teardrop used).[55][56]

text: One of the fields in an IP header is the “fragment offset” field, indicating the starting position, or offset, of the data contained in a fragmented packet relative to the data in the original packet. If the sum of the offset and size of one fragmented packet differs from that of the next fragmented packet, the packets overlap. When this happens, a server vulnerable to teardrop attacks is unable to reassemble the packets - resulting in a denial-of-service condition.

text: Telephony denial-of-service (TDoS)[edit]

text: Voice over IP has made abusive origination of large numbers of telephone voice calls inexpensive and readily automated while permitting call origins to be misrepresented through caller ID spoofing.

text: According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, telephony denial-of-service (TDoS) has appeared as part of various fraudulent schemes:

text:
A scammer contacts the victim's banker or broker, impersonating the victim to request a funds transfer. The banker's attempt to contact the victim for verification of the transfer fails as the victim's telephone lines are being flooded with thousands of bogus calls, rendering the victim unreachable.[57]
A scammer contacts consumers with a bogus claim to collect an outstanding payday loan for thousands of dollars. When the consumer objects, the scammer retaliates by flooding the victim's employer with thousands of automated calls. In some cases, displayed caller ID is spoofed to impersonate police or law enforcement agencies.[58]
A scammer contacts consumers with a bogus debt collection demand and threatens to send police; when the victim balks, the scammer floods local police numbers with calls on which caller ID is spoofed to display the victims number. Police soon arrive at the victim's residence attempting to find the origin of the calls.

text: Telephony denial-of-service can exist even without Internet telephony. In the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal, telemarketers were used to flood political opponents with spurious calls to jam phone banks on election day. Widespread publication of a number can also flood it with enough calls to render it unusable, as happened by accident in 1981 with multiple +1-area code-867-5309 subscribers inundated by hundreds of misdialed calls daily in response to the song 867-5309/Jenny.

text: TDoS differs from other telephone harassment (such as prank calls and obscene phone calls) by the number of calls originated; by occupying lines continuously with repeated automated calls, the victim is prevented from making or receiving both routine and emergency telephone calls.

text: Related exploits include SMS flooding attacks and black fax or fax loop transmission.

text: Defense techniques[edit]

text: Defensive responses to denial-of-service attacks typically involve the use of a combination of attack detection, traffic classification and response tools, aiming to block traffic that they identify as illegitimate and allow traffic that they identify as legitimate.[59] A list of prevention and response tools is provided below:

text: Application front end hardware[edit]

text: Application front-end hardware is intelligent hardware placed on the network before traffic reaches the servers. It can be used on networks in conjunction with routers and switches. Application front end hardware analyzes data packets as they enter the system, and then identifies them as priority, regular, or dangerous. There are more than 25 bandwidth management vendors.

text: Application level Key Completion Indicators[edit]

text: In order to meet the case of application level DDoS attacks against cloud-based applications, approaches may be based on an application layer analysis, to indicate whether an incoming traffic bulk is legitimate or not and thus enable the triggering of elasticity decisions without the economical implications of a DDoS attack.[60] These approaches mainly rely on an identified path of value inside the application and monitor the macroscopic progress of the requests in this path, towards the final generation of profit, through markers denoted as Key Completion Indicators.[61]

text: In essence, this technique is a statistical method of assessing the behavior of incoming requests to detect if something unusual or abnormal is going on. Imagine if you were to observe the behavior of normal, paying customers at a brick-and-mortar department store. On average, they would spend in aggregate a known percentage of time on different activities such as picking up items and examining them, putting them back on shelves, trying on clothes, filling a basket, waiting in line, paying for their purchases, and leaving. These high-level activities correspond to the Key Completion Indicators in a service or site, and once normal behavior is determined, abnormal behavior can be identified. For example, if a huge number of customers arrive and spend all their time picking up items and setting them down, but never making any purchases, this can be flagged as unusual behavior.

text: In the case of elastic cloud services where a huge and abnormal additional workload may incur significant charges from the cloud service provider, this technique can be used to stop or even scale back the elastic expansion of server availability in order to protect from economic loss. In the example analogy, imagine that the department store had the ability to bring in additional employees on a few minutes' notice and routinely did this during "rushes" of unusual customer volume. If a mob shows up that never does any buying, after a relatively short time of paying for the additional employee costs, the store can scale back the number of employees, understanding that the non-buying customers provide no profit for the store and thus should not be serviced. While this may prevent the store from making sales to legitimate customers during the period of attack, it saves the potentially ruinous cost of calling up huge numbers of employees to service an illegitimate load.

text: Blackholing and sinkholing[edit]

text: With blackhole routing, all the traffic to the attacked DNS or IP address is sent to a "black hole" (null interface or a non-existent server). To be more efficient and avoid affecting network connectivity, it can be managed by the ISP.[62]

text: A DNS sinkhole routes traffic to a valid IP address which analyzes traffic and rejects bad packets. Sinkholing is not efficient for most severe attacks.

text: IPS based prevention[edit]

text: Intrusion prevention systems (IPS) are effective if the attacks have signatures associated with them. However, the trend among the attacks is to have legitimate content but bad intent. Intrusion-prevention systems which work on content recognition cannot block behavior-based DoS attacks.[17][citation needed]

text: An ASIC based IPS may detect and block denial-of-service attacks because they have the processing power and the granularity to analyze the attacks and act like a circuit breaker in an automated way.[17][citation needed]

text: A rate-based IPS (RBIPS) must analyze traffic granularly and continuously monitor the traffic pattern and determine if there is traffic anomaly. It must let the legitimate traffic flow while blocking the DoS attack traffic.[63]

text: DDS based defense[edit]

text: More focused on the problem than IPS, a DoS defense system (DDS) can block connection-based DoS attacks and those with legitimate content but bad intent. A DDS can also address both protocol attacks (such as teardrop and ping of death) and rate-based attacks (such as ICMP floods and SYN floods).

text: Firewalls[edit]

text: In the case of a simple attack, a firewall could have a simple rule added to deny all incoming traffic from the attackers, based on protocols, ports or the originating IP addresses.

text: More complex attacks will however be hard to block with simple rules: for example, if there is an ongoing attack on port 80 (web service), it is not possible to drop all incoming traffic on this port because doing so will prevent the server from serving legitimate traffic.[64] Additionally, firewalls may be too deep in the network hierarchy, with routers being adversely affected before the traffic gets to the firewall.

text: Routers[edit]

text: Similar to switches, routers have some rate-limiting and ACL capability. They, too, are manually set. Most routers can be easily overwhelmed under a DoS attack. Cisco IOS has optional features that can reduce the impact of flooding.[65]

text: Switches[edit]

text: Most switches have some rate-limiting and ACL capability. Some switches provide automatic and/or system-wide rate limiting, traffic shaping, delayed binding (TCP splicing), deep packet inspection and Bogon filtering (bogus IP filtering) to detect and remediate DoS attacks through automatic rate filtering and WAN Link failover and balancing.[17][citation needed]

text: These schemes will work as long as the DoS attacks can be prevented by using them. For example, SYN flood can be prevented using delayed binding or TCP splicing. Similarly content based DoS may be prevented using deep packet inspection. Attacks originating from dark addresses or going to dark addresses can be prevented using bogon filtering. Automatic rate filtering can work as long as set rate-thresholds have been set correctly. Wan-link failover will work as long as both links have DoS/DDoS prevention mechanism.[17][citation needed]

text: Upstream filtering[edit]

text: All traffic is passed through a "cleaning center" or a "scrubbing center" via various methods such as proxies, tunnels, digital cross connects, or even direct circuits, which separates "bad" traffic (DDoS and also other common internet attacks) and only sends good traffic beyond to the server. The provider needs central connectivity to the Internet to manage this kind of service unless they happen to be located within the same facility as the "cleaning center" or "scrubbing center".[66]

text: Examples of providers of this service:

text:
Akamai Technologies[67]
CloudFlare[68]
Level 3 Communications[69]
Radware[70]
Arbor Networks[71]
AT&T[72]
F5 Networks[73]
Incapsula[74]
Neustar Inc[75]
Tata Communications[76]
Verisign[77]
Verizon[78][79]

text: Unintentional denial-of-service[edit]

text: An unintentional denial-of-service can occur when a system ends up denied, not due to a deliberate attack by a single individual or group of individuals, but simply due to a sudden enormous spike in popularity. This can happen when an extremely popular website posts a prominent link to a second, less well-prepared site, for example, as part of a news story. The result is that a significant proportion of the primary site's regular users – potentially hundreds of thousands of people – click that link in the space of a few hours, having the same effect on the target website as a DDoS attack. A VIPDoS is the same, but specifically when the link was posted by a celebrity.

text: When Michael Jackson died in 2009, websites such as Google and Twitter slowed down or even crashed.[80] Many sites' servers thought the requests were from a virus or spyware trying to cause a denial-of-service attack, warning users that their queries looked like "automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".[81]

text: News sites and link sites – sites whose primary function is to provide links to interesting content elsewhere on the Internet – are most likely to cause this phenomenon. The canonical example is the Slashdot effect when receiving traffic from Slashdot. It is also known as "the Reddit hug of death" and "the Digg effect".

text: Routers have also been known to create unintentional DoS attacks, as both D-Link and Netgear routers have overloaded NTP servers by flooding NTP servers without respecting the restrictions of client types or geographical limitations.

text: Similar unintentional denials-of-service can also occur via other media, e.g. when a URL is mentioned on television. If a server is being indexed by Google or another search engine during peak periods of activity, or does not have a lot of available bandwidth while being indexed, it can also experience the effects of a DoS attack.[17][citation needed]

text: Legal action has been taken in at least one such case. In 2006, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation sued YouTube: massive numbers of would-be youtube.com users accidentally typed the tube company's URL, utube.com. As a result, the tube company ended up having to spend large amounts of money on upgrading their bandwidth.[82] The company appears to have taken advantage of the situation, with utube.com now containing ads for advertisement revenue.

text: In March 2014, after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing, DigitalGlobe launched a crowdsourcing service on which users could help search for the missing jet in satellite images. The response overwhelmed the company's servers.[83]

text: An unintentional denial-of-service may also result from a prescheduled event created by the website itself, as was the case of the Census in Australia in 2016. This could be caused when a server provides some service at a specific time. This might be a university website setting the grades to be available where it will result in many more login requests at that time than any other.

text: Side effects of attacks[edit]

text: Backscatter[edit]

text: In computer network security, backscatter is a side-effect of a spoofed denial-of-service attack. In this kind of attack, the attacker spoofs (or forges) the source address in IP packets sent to the victim. In general, the victim machine cannot distinguish between the spoofed packets and legitimate packets, so the victim responds to the spoofed packets as it normally would. These response packets are known as backscatter.[84]

text: If the attacker is spoofing source addresses randomly, the backscatter response packets from the victim will be sent back to random destinations. This effect can be used by network telescopes as indirect evidence of such attacks.

text: The term "backscatter analysis" refers to observing backscatter packets arriving at a statistically significant portion of the IP address space to determine characteristics of DoS attacks and victims.

text: Legality[edit]

text: Many jurisdictions have laws under which denial-of-service attacks are illegal.

text:
In the US, denial-of-service attacks may be considered a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act with penalties that include years of imprisonment.[85] The Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the US Department of Justice handles cases of (D)DoS.
In European countries, committing criminal denial-of-service attacks may, as a minimum, lead to arrest.[86] The United Kingdom is unusual in that it specifically outlawed denial-of-service attacks and set a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison with the Police and Justice Act 2006, which amended Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.[87]

text: On January 7, 2013, Anonymous posted a petition on the whitehouse.gov site asking that DDoS be recognized as a legal form of protest similar to the Occupy protests, the claim being that the similarity in purpose of both are same.[88][89]


document_title: Stories We Could Tell

question_text: who wrote the song the stories we could tell

text: Stories We Could Tell

text:
Stories We Could Tell

Studio album by The Everly Brothers

Released
March 1972

Recorded
August 23, 1971 - January 12, 1972

Genre
Country rock

Length
38:35

Label
RCA

Producer
Paul Rothchild

The Everly Brothers chronology

Everly Brothers Show
(1970)Everly Brothers Show1970
Stories We Could Tell
(1972)
Pass the Chicken & Listen
(1973)Pass the Chicken & Listen1973

text:
Professional ratings

Review scores

Source
Rating

Allmusic
 link

Rolling Stone
mixed link

Robert Christgau
C link

text: Stories We Could Tell is a country rock album by The Everly Brothers, released in 1972. It was reissued as Stories We Could Tell:The RCA Years by BMG in 2003 and included additional tracks, all stemming from the successor album Pass the Chicken & Listen. In 2014 it was re-released once more on Stories We Could Tell + Pass The Chicken & Listen by Morello Records.

text: Track listing[edit]

text:
"All We Really Want to Do" (Bonnie Bramlett, Delaney Bramlett) – 2:22
"Breakdown" (Kris Kristofferson) – 3:12
"Green River" (Don Everly, Phil Everly) – 4:42
"Mandolin Wind" (Rod Stewart) – 3:01
"Up in Mabel's Room" (Phil Everly, Terry Slater) – 3:15
"Del Rio Dan" (Jeff Kent, Doug Lubahn, Holli Lynn Beckwith) – 3:57

tag: ol

text:
"Ridin' High" (Dennis Linde) – 2:41
"Christmas Eve Can Kill You" (Dennis Linde) – 3:26
"Three Armed, Poker-Playin' River Rat" (Dennis Linde) – 2:46
"I'm Tired of Singing My Song in Las Vegas" (Don Everly) – 3:14
"The Brand New Tennessee Waltz" (Jesse Winchester) – 3:11
"Stories We Could Tell" (John Sebastian) – 3:19

text: Personnel[edit]

text:
Don Everly – guitar, vocals
Phil Everly – guitar, vocals
Delaney Bramlett – guitar, vocals
Jeff Kent – guitar, vocals
Dennis Linde – guitar, keyboards
Geoff Muldaur – guitar
Wayne Perkins – guitar
John Sebastian – guitar, harmonica, vocals
Waddy Wachtel – guitar
Danny Weis – guitar
Clarence White – guitar
Ry Cooder – electric bottleneck guitar on "Green River" & "Del Rio Dan"
Buddy Emmons – slide guitar
Jerry McGee – slide guitar
Barry Beckett – keyboards
Michael Fonfara – keyboards
Spooner Oldham – keyboards
Warren Zevon – keyboards
Johnny Barbata – drums
Jim Gordon – drums
Russ Kunkel – drums
George Bohanon – brass
Tommy Johnson – brass
Chris Ethridge – bass
Jimmie Haskell – string arrangement
David Crosby – vocals
Doug Lubahn – vocals
Graham Nash – vocals
Norman Seeff - photography


document_title: List of Call the Midwife episodes

question_text: how many episodes of call the midwife are there in season 7

text: List of Call the Midwife episodes

text: Series overview[edit]

text: SeriesEpisodesOriginally airedAve. UK viewers(millions)[a]First airedLast aired1615 January 2012 (2012-01-15)19 February 2012 (2012-02-19)10.6128 (+1)25 December 2012 (special)20 January 2013 (2013-01-20)10 March 2013 (2013-03-10)10.4738 (+1)25 December 2013 (special)19 January 2014 (2014-01-19)9 March 2014 (2014-03-09)10.5448 (+1)25 December 2014 (special)18 January 2015 (2015-01-18)8 March 2015 (2015-03-08)10.8258 (+1)25 December 2015 (special)17 January 2016 (2016-01-17)6 March 2016 (2016-03-06)10.5468 (+1)25 December 2016 (special)22 January 2017 (2017-01-22)12 March 2017 (2017-03-12)10.7578 (+1)25 December 2017 (special)21 January 2018 (2018-01-21)11 March 20189.97

text: Episodes[edit]

text: Series 1 (2012)[edit]

text:
Series 1No.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]1Episode 1Philippa LowthorpeHeidi Thomas15 January 2012 (2012-01-15)9.83
In 1957, Jenny Lee (Jessica Raine) arrives for her new job at Nonnatus House, a nursing convent in the Poplar district of London. The convent is home to a small order of nuns consisting of Sisters Julienne (Jenny Agutter), Evangelina (Pam Ferris), Bernadette (Laura Main), and Monica Joan (Judy Parfitt). Two other midwives, Trixie Franklin (Helen George) and Cynthia Miller (Bryony Hannah), already work at the convent, as does handyman Fred (Cliff Parisi). Jenny also meets local physician Dr Patrick Turner (Stephen McGann). After some initial difficulties fitting in, Jenny's first assigned expectant mother is Conchita Warren, a Spanish woman who already has a huge family. Conchita suffers a concussion in a fall, which also triggers premature labour, making Jenny's first delivery a traumatic and difficult one which she must handle alone.
2Episode 2Philippa LowthorpeHeidi Thomas22 January 2012 (2012-01-22)10.47
New midwife Camilla Fortescue-Cholmondeley-Browne, nicknamed Chummy (Miranda Hart), arrives at the convent to begin work. She hails from an upper-class background and aspires to become a Christian missionary, but finds getting to grips with her new job difficult and Sister Evangelina a harsh critic. While struggling to learn to ride a bicycle (which the midwives use to make their rounds), she encounters local policeman Peter Noakes (Ben Caplan). Meanwhile, Jenny befriends Mary, a pregnant teenaged girl from Ireland, who was forced into prostitution upon her arrival in London but wants to try to make a better life for herself and her child. Ultimately, reflecting the morals of the era, Mary's baby is removed from her after the birth.
3Episode 3Philippa LowthorpeJack Williams29 January 2012 (2012-01-29)10.66
While undertaking district nursing work, Jenny befriends Joe, an elderly former soldier who now lives alone in a run-down, roach-infested flat, in a tenement block which has been condemned. Jenny attempts to revive his spirits by helping him attend an upcoming reunion of his old regiment. Meanwhile, Trixie and Cynthia deal with the case of a woman in her forties who is upset at having become pregnant comparatively late in life, even though her husband is delighted at the prospect. It is later revealed that her reluctance to give birth is because she knows that the child will be dark-skinned, the result of a brief affair. When the child is born, her husband adores the baby nevertheless.
4Episode 4Jamie PayneEsther Wilson5 February 2012 (2012-02-05)10.89
Jenny delivers a baby girl to Shirley Redmond, but soon afterwards the newborn disappears from her pram, leading to a tense and widespread search. Following a hunch, Jenny discovers the child was snatched by Mary, the Irish girl whom she had befriended previously and who was left traumatised by having her own child taken from her. At Jenny's request, the nuns of Nonnatus House petition the police not to prosecute the young runaway. Meanwhile, Cynthia deals with the case of a middle-aged headmaster and his young wife who are expecting their first child, but the couple are devastated when the wife is afflicted by eclampsia.
5Episode 5Jamie PayneHarriet Warner12 February 2012 (2012-02-12)10.42
The nuns and midwives come to the assistance of their cleaner, Peggy, whose brother has been diagnosed with cancer. While caring for him, Jenny learns about how the siblings grew up together in a harsh workhouse and how they developed an incestuous relationship which has persisted ever since. Meanwhile, Fred has acquired a pig and plans to make money by selling its bacon, but he soon discovers the pig is pregnant and can no longer bring himself to raise it for food. He enlists the help of the midwives, who for once must assist in the birth of animals rather than humans.
6Episode 6Jamie PayneHeidi Thomas19 February 2012 (2012-02-19)11.41
Sister Monica Joan, whose mental health has long been a concern, contracts pneumonia after roaming the streets at night in a state of emotional distress and is subsequently arrested for theft and put on trial. Meanwhile, Chummy's mother visits her to pass judgement on PC Noakes, whom the midwife is courting, but the aristocratic but now impoverished Lady Browne clearly does not approve of her daughter's relationship with a working-class man. Desperate to please her mother, Chummy decides that the only course of action is to end her relationship with the policeman. The other midwives convince her to change her mind, and the episode concludes with the couple's wedding.

text: Series 2 (2013)[edit]

text:
Christmas specialNo.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]7Christmas specialPhilippa LowthorpeHeidi Thomas25 December 2012 (2012-12-25)10.18
As it is Nurse Lee's first Christmas in Poplar, she is put in charge of caring for the destitute Mrs Jenkins alongside one of the sisters. Mrs Jenkins mistakes Jenny for her daughter Rosie, whom she lost when admitted to the workhouse. Chummy is busy preparing for the nativity play, which will be performed for the Mayor of Poplar, and all hands are needed to produce the ever growing number of costumes and props needed for the play. Meanwhile, a young teenage girl who helps her mother with her brothers is also secretly pregnant, and when a baby is left at the convent's front door, the infant's mother must be found.

text:
Series 2No.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]8Episode 1Philippa LowthorpeHeidi Thomas20 January 2013 (2013-01-20)10.79
Jenny is assigned a new patient, Molly Brignall, who has an abusive husband, and Jenny must handle the case very carefully. Trixie and Sister Evangelina are called to a foreign cargo ship docked in London and discover that the captain's daughter is about to have a baby after her father has brought her along and allowed various members of the crew to have sex with her as a way of relieving the tensions of the long periods spent at sea.
9Episode 2Roger GoldbyHarriet Warner27 January 2013 (2013-01-27)10.24
A baby delivered by Cynthia dies in mysterious circumstances soon afterwards. The police become involved, and other pregnant women refuse to allow the shy young midwife to attend them, bringing Cynthia to the verge of a breakdown. Chummy's decision to apply to undertake missionary work in Africa leads her to question her priorities. Meanwhile, a chance encounter returns former boyfriend Jimmy to Jenny's life, but she is surprised to find that he has a pregnant girlfriend.
10Episode 3Roger GoldbyHeidi Thomas & John Martin Johnson3 February 2013 (2013-02-03)10.85
Jenny is reluctantly seconded to the London Hospital and finds herself working on the male surgical ward under a stern surgeon with whom she finds herself clashing. In the absence of Jenny and Chummy, a new orderly, the shy and withdrawn Jane Sutton (Dorothy Atkinson), fills in at Nonnatus House. The staff deal with a formidable pair of twins who share a husband; one of them is now pregnant and the other refuses to allow her to be treated by the midwives. Jenny once again crosses paths with Jimmy, who has been hospitalised, and she helps to save his life when the surgeon misdiagnoses him.
11Episode 4Roger GoldbyMark Catley10 February 2013 (2013-02-10)10.42
Back in Poplar, Jenny assists at the birth of a baby boy who is born with spina bifida. His parents cannot come to terms with their son's condition, which also affects Jenny. Meanwhile, the mousy Jane undergoes a somewhat hesitant romance with the Reverend Thornton Applebee-Thornton, an Anglican priest staying at Nonnatus House.
12Episode 5China Moo-YoungHeidi Thomas17 February 2013 (2013-02-17)10.15
Sister Bernadette suffers a crisis as she struggles to come to terms with her burgeoning romantic feelings for Dr Turner. Preparations are underway for the annual summer fete and Trixie volunteers to enlist a celebrity judge for the baby show, but when she secures the services of a top television star, he turns out to have a darker side when he tries to force himself on her. Jenny meets an expectant mother who already has eight children and does not believe she will be able to cope with another. After Jenny's attempts to reassure her fail, she undergoes an illegal abortion which leaves her fighting for her life.
13Episode 6China Moo-YoungJess Williams24 February 2013 (2013-02-24)10.26
Fearing an epidemic of tuberculosis, Dr Turner arranges for a mass X-ray programme to come to Poplar. When Sister Bernadette undergoes a chest X-ray to encourage a reluctant girl, she is devastated to discover that she has the illness. Jenny encounters a dying pub owner who lost almost his entire family to tuberculosis, and must try to reconcile him with his only surviving child.
14Episode 7Minkie SpiroHarriet Warner3 March 2013 (2013-03-03)10.68
Chummy and Peter return to Poplar, revealing the surprise that she is pregnant. Sister Evangelina and Fred try out a new scooter. Jenny tends to a Jamaican immigrant who struggles to deal with racial abuse from her neighbours even as she goes into labour, while Cynthia deals with a diabetic pub owner who bullies his wife. Sister Bernadette comes to a decision about her feelings for Dr Turner.
15Episode 8Minkie SpiroHeidi Thomas10 March 2013 (2013-03-10)10.38
As Chummy and Peter prepare to become parents, Fred has a visit from his daughter Dolly, who also has a baby on the way. Sister Bernadette's health crisis has passed and she will soon be free to leave the sanatorium, but she must now decide whether to return to Nonnatus House or leave the order. Jimmy reappears, accompanied by his handsome colleague Alec, having been tasked by the council to survey the buildings in the area. Alec seems keen on Jenny, and an evening out to a jazz club sees romance blossom. Chummy goes into labour and gives birth to a son whom she names Fred. Sister Bernadette resigns as a nun, and she and Dr Turner become engaged. But there is bad news for the midwives as Nonnatus House is earmarked for demolition.

text: Series 3 (2014)[edit]

text:
Christmas specialNo.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]16Christmas specialThea SharrockHeidi Thomas25 December 2013 (2013-12-25)9.16
Shelagh (formerly Sister Bernadette) agonises over her decision to leave the convent and marry Dr Turner, and when his son Timothy is diagnosed with polio the wedding is called off. Trixie tries to help a patient's husband who has been traumatised by his time fighting in the Korean War. An unexploded German bomb is discovered near the convent, forcing local residents to flee their homes. Ultimately Shelagh and Dr Turner's wedding takes place, but damage caused by the controlled detonation of the bomb advances the demolition of Nonnatus House.

text:
Series 3No.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]17Episode 1Thea SharrockHeidi Thomas19 January 2014 (2014-01-19)11.35
It is now 1959, and the nuns and midwives move into a new Nonnatus House, joined by new arrival Sister Winifred (Victoria Yeates), while Chummy struggles to adjust to life as a housewife. The weekly clinics are also at a new location and it proves hard to raise awareness until Chummy manages to arrange for Princess Margaret to make an official visit. Jenny and Dr Turner find it hard to identify why a mother's two children are regularly ill, but an antique book belonging to Sister Monica Joan unexpectedly provides the clue that leads to a diagnosis of the then little-known condition cystic fibrosis. After delivering a baby in an emergency, Chummy is asked to return to Nonnatus House as a part-time midwife.
18Episode 2Juliet MayHarriet Warner26 January 2014 (2014-01-26)10.83
Jenny is promoted to the position of nursing sister over the more experienced Trixie, which causes resentment between the pair. After attending a lecture by a prominent doctor, Cynthia attempts to introduce more modern approaches to relaxation and pain relief during childbirth, but meets resistance from Sister Evangelina. Ultimately, however, her methods are vindicated when they help a young mother cope with a difficult birth. Jenny deals with Doris, a mother with an aggressive husband whose delivery will reveal her infidelity. She plans to abandon the baby but is persuaded by Jenny to follow the proper procedures for having the infant adopted. Despite their best efforts, Doris' husband discovers her secret, forcing a more hasty and distressing parting between mother and child.
19Episode 3Juliet MayLiz Lake2 February 2014 (2014-02-02)10.55
When the regular midwifery team at HM Prison Holloway is stricken with influenza, Sister Julienne and Trixie are drafted in to cover, and both find the conditions hard to deal with. Sister Julienne becomes involved with Stella Crangle, a heavily pregnant inmate who wishes to better herself and is afraid that after she has given birth the prison authorities will remove her child from her. Sister Julienne and Trixie meet Chaplain Tom Hereward while at the prison. Shelagh and Dr Turner long to start a family and are devastated when it is found that, as a result of her earlier tuberculosis, she is unable to have children. Fred secures theatre tickets as a treat for Chummy's birthday but is left embarrassed when they turn out to be counterfeit.
20Episode 4Juliet MayGabbie Asher and Heidi Thomas9 February 2014 (2014-02-09)10.23
When Jenny's boyfriend Alec invites her to spend the weekend with him in Brighton, she is suspicious of his motives. Soon afterwards, he is involved in an accident at work and, although he initially seems to be recovering, he takes a turn for the worse and dies, leaving Jenny devastated. Sister Winifred helps an elderly Jewish woman who has not left her flat for twelve years. Shelagh attempts to find a new purpose in life by reviving the Poplar Choral Society. Jenny is persuaded to take compassionate leave and go to stay at the nuns' "mother house" for a time.
21Episode 5China Moo-YoungHeidi Thomas16 February 2014 (2014-02-16)10.15
With Jenny away and Sister Julienne taken ill, Shelagh takes over the administration of Nonnatus House and engages the services of new midwife Patsy Mount (Emerald Fennell). The staff are planning a jubilee party to mark the anniversary of Sister Evangelina having taken her final vows, but she is opposed to the celebration. An attempt to contact her family leads to an unwelcome encounter with her brother, an alcoholic derelict. Meanwhile, Sally, a woman with Down's syndrome, living in a residential home, has become pregnant. Her family are angry and believe that one of the staff must have abused her, but it turns out she has formed a relationship with Jacob, another resident at the home. The staff refuse to accept that the couple's relationship is genuine and, after the baby is stillborn, Jacob is removed to another home in Scotland. Jessica Raine retains top billing for this episode, even though she is only seen briefly in a non-speaking role.
22Episode 6China Moo-YoungDamian Wayling23 February 2014 (2014-02-23)10.49
Trixie is delighted when handsome curate Tom Hereward invites her to a cricket match, but is less impressed to find that they are taking a group of Cub Scouts to Clacton-on-Sea in a run-down old bus which breaks down en route. Patsy recognises a patient's mystery ailment as the legacy of a tropical disease contracted in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Far East, and reveals that she grew up in Singapore and was herself in an internment camp during the Second World War. Trixie helps a young couple of Irish runaways from Belfast who are unmarried and expecting their first child. Shelagh and Dr Turner resolve to look into adopting a child. Jessica Raine does not appear at all in this episode.
23Episode 7Minkie SpiroHarriet Warner2 March 2014 (2014-03-02)10.65
Jenny returns to work, but is seconded to the London Hospital, where she finds her approach to patient care hampered by strict regulations. Chummy is surprised to find that her parents have separated, and invites her mother to stay, despite the haughty Lady Browne's disdain for her daughter's lifestyle. Later, Chummy is devastated to learn that her mother is suffering from terminal cancer. Sister Julienne and Cynthia help a young mother who, after giving birth, displays increasingly irrational behaviour, nearly jumping off a bridge with her baby. She is eventually diagnosed with puerperal psychosis and sent to a mental institution for treatment. Shelagh and Dr Turner's plan to adopt a child is threatened when background checks reveal that he spent time in a military mental institution after serving in the Second World War.
24Episode 8Minkie SpiroHeidi Thomas9 March 2014 (2014-03-09)10.09
Shelagh and Dr Turner are approved for adoption and become the parents of a baby girl. Chummy's colleagues rally round as her mother's condition deteriorates and Lady Browne eventually dies peacefully in bed at Chummy's house. The experience has a particular effect on Jenny, who decides that her vocation now lies with caring for the terminally ill, and she resigns from Nonnatus House, leaving midwifery behind to begin a new career as a Marie Curie nurse.

text: Series 4 (2015)[edit]

text:
Christmas specialNo.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]25Christmas specialThaddeus O'SullivanHeidi Thomas25 December 2014 (2014-12-25)9.69
When harsh conditions at a home for unmarried expectant mothers are exposed, Chummy and Patsy are required to take over the running of the home, and later help a young mother decide that she is not as set on giving her baby up for adoption as she had thought. Cynthia wrestles with a calling to become a nun, but an encounter with a former mental hospital inmate helps her to make up her mind and she leaves midwifery behind to become a postulant. Although the character of Jenny was written out at the end of the previous series, Vanessa Redgrave continues to provide voice-overs as "mature" Jenny and appears on-screen for the first time in a framing sequence set in 2005.

text:
Series 4No.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]26Episode 1Thaddeus O'SullivanHeidi Thomas18 January 2015 (2015-01-18)10.55
In 1960, new nurse Barbara Gilbert (Charlotte Ritchie) arrives to take up duties at Nonnatus House, but struggles to make a good first impression, especially when a late-night drinking session with Trixie and Patsy leaves her extremely hungover. Trixie helps a family of four children who are regularly left alone by their mother in conditions of abject squalor, which brings back bad memories of her own childhood. Impressed by the qualities she displays in dealing with the situation, her boyfriend Tom asks her to marry him. Sister Evangelina finally seeks help for pains which have been troubling her for some time. Chummy temporarily leaves Nonnatus House to take over as matron of the mother and baby home.
27Episode 2Juliet MayHeidi Thomas25 January 2015 (2015-01-25)10.98
Another new nurse, Phyllis Crane (Linda Bassett), joins the staff at Nonnatus House and infuriates the staff, especially Sister Evangelina, with her officious manner. Sister Julienne is delighted when a rich benefactor resolves to leave a legacy to the convent, but finds herself tormented when it is revealed that it is a man, Charles Newgarden (Nicholas Farrell), with whom she shared a romantic relationship 30 years earlier. Barbara and Patsy are both devastated when they deliver a stillborn child to a young Trinidadian mother, but everyone is delighted when her labour continues and a healthy twin is born. Trixie's obsession with organising an extravagant engagement party threatens to drive a wedge between her and Tom.
28Episode 3Juliet MayHarriet Warner1 February 2015 (2015-02-01)11.07
The community is outraged and opinions divided at Nonnatus House when an expectant father is charged with gross indecency after being caught committing homosexual acts (at the time illegal in the United Kingdom). He is ordered to undergo hormone treatment, and the couple are despised and shunned by neighbours. Phyllis investigates when she realises that an impoverished Irish immigrant woman has lied about where she lives. Dr Turner and Shelagh are able to trace the source of an outbreak of dysentery to a food delivery service.
29Episode 4Amy NeilDamian Wayling8 February 2015 (2015-02-08)10.92
After an encounter with a young prostitute who is both pregnant and infected with syphilis, Sister Winifred attempts to spread the message of safe sex among the prostitutes of the neighbourhood. Barbara deals with a man who is so desperate to have a son to inherit the family business that he will not accept his wife delivering a daughter.  Sister Monica Joan finds a new sense of purpose when she is unexpectedly forced to assist Shelagh with a birth. After learning that Tom will be assigned to a lower-class, very far-off parish in Newcastle, Trixie breaks off her engagement to him, passing out after consuming a large amount of alcoholic drink to cope, forcing an exhausted Barbara to serve as midwife in her third delivery of the day.
30Episode 5Dominic LeclercCarolyn Bonnyman15 February 2015 (2015-02-15)11.27
When a baby suffers two fractures in mysterious circumstances, suspicion falls on his parents, who are Christian Scientists and hesitant against any medical treatment. Dr Turner arranges for the child to be taken into care, but later realises that the baby actually has osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare bone disease. The doctor's guilt over the unnecessary suffering he has put the parents through, combined with overwork, drives him to illness. Shelagh attempts to take over running the surgery, but is not taken seriously until she dons a nurse's uniform. Barbara endeavours to help a Sylheti (Bengali) woman whose pregnancy is complicated by the fact that she cannot speak English and has diphtheria. Cynthia, now Sister Mary Cynthia, returns to Nonnatus House.
31Episode 6Dominic LeclercHeidi Thomas22 February 2015 (2015-02-22)10.53
Sister Mary Cynthia befriends a group of Irish Travellers camped on a bombsite, but things become complicated when one of the women goes into labour just as police arrive to evict the travellers from the site. When an unwed, diabetic teenage girl finds she is pregnant, she is advised to have a termination due to the potential complications that her diabetes may cause. Rather than lose her baby, she goes on the run with her boyfriend, but without a supply of insulin she becomes dangerously ill, and her boyfriend must act quickly to save her life.
32Episode 7Darcia MartinHarriet Warner1 March 2015 (2015-03-01)10.57
Two former school friends give birth at the maternity home on the same day, but in the confusion of a fire evacuation Sister Evangelina accidentally switches the babies. When the mistake is revealed, the two sets of parents have differing views on how the situation should be resolved. An elderly couple who have not been apart since the war must face separation when one is diagnosed with cancer. Fred proposes to shopkeeper Violet, while Patsy must conceal her relationship with nurse Delia.
33Episode 8Darcia MartinHeidi Thomas8 March 2015 (2015-03-08)10.64
Chummy returns to Nonnatus House. Trixie helps a deaf patient who is concerned that her child may inherit her condition. A patient whose severe sickness is initially dismissed as mere nerves is diagnosed with the serious condition hyperemesis gravidarum but treated with the revolutionary drug thalidomide. Fred's daughter Marlene's interference causes his relationship with Violet to flounder, but with the help of Chummy, the couple are reunited and marry. Patsy is heartbroken when Delia is left with amnesia following a traffic accident and has no recollection of her. Trixie admits that she is an alcoholic and joins an alcoholic support group with the help of Sister Mary Cynthia.

text: Series 5 (2016)[edit]

text:
Christmas specialNo.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]34Christmas specialJuliet MayHeidi Thomas25 December 2015 (2015-12-25)10.13
The BBC plan to televise a carol service from Poplar, but Shelagh's plans for the event are thrown into chaos when the children's choir she has organised is quarantined due to a measles outbreak. Following an argument, Sister Monica Joan goes missing, and when a body is found in the river the nuns fear the worst. This proves to be a false alarm, however, and the elderly nun is eventually tracked down at the now-abandoned country house which had been her childhood home. A partly-recovered Delia re-enters Patsy's life.

text:
Series 5No.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]35Episode 1Syd MacartneyHeidi Thomas17 January 2016 (2016-01-17)10.40
It is now 1961. When a baby is born with severe deformities, the midwives find it difficult to handle the situation, and the baby's father rejects her completely, to his wife's dismay. Trixie's new sideline as a keep fit instructor brings her into conflict with Sister Julienne, and she also becomes suspicious of the relationship between Barbara and Tom. Rather than return to Wales as her mother wishes, Delia is invited to move into Nonnatus House.
36Episode 2Syd MacartneyHarriet Warner24 January 2016 (2016-01-24)10.44
Sister Evangelina's vocal opposition to mothers using formula milk causes a young woman who is unable to breastfeed to doubt her abilities as a mother and places her baby in danger through dehydration. In the aftermath of the incident Sister Evangelina asks to temporarily leave Nonnatus House to spend time with an enclosed order. Barbara is caught between an expectant mother and her husband, who is accused of being workshy. When it is discovered that he is actually terminally ill, his wife begs to have her baby induced before her husband dies. Phyllis develops feelings for a man she met at an evening class, drives him on a country outing, but is shocked to find that he has concealed from her that he has a wife with dementia.
37Episode 3Sheree FolksonCarolyn Bonnyman31 January 2016 (2016-01-31)10.16
A new mother is diagnosed with typhoid, stirring up uncomfortable memories for Patsy, whose mother and sister died of the disease in a prisoner of war camp. Eventually, the young woman's grandmother is revealed to be a carrier of the disease, a situation which she struggles to accept. A young teacher, pregnant by a married man, loses her home and her job and is driven by desperation to attempt to abort her own baby, at the time a crime. Barbara agonises over whether to tell Trixie that she has been invited to have dinner with Tom.
38Episode 4Sheree FolksonHeidi Thomas7 February 2016 (2016-02-07)10.57
A bright young man is delighted to gain a place at university, but his plans are complicated when his girlfriend discovers that she is pregnant, and he must decide what is the right thing to do. Sister Julienne is seconded to a hospital and witnesses another baby born with very severe birth defects. When the baby dies before its mother has even seen it, Sister Julienne must decide whether her faith permits her to conceal the truth about the birth from the mother. Meanwhile, Dr Turner and Shelagh begin to search for a cause for the birth defects. Trixie and Tom finally come to terms with the end of their engagement, and she gives her blessing to his relationship with Barbara.
39Episode 5Lisa ClarkeHarriet Warner14 February 2016 (2016-02-14)10.23
When Phyllis' car breaks down on the way to a delivery, Delia must talk a young mother through her home birth over the telephone. Subsequently the mother begins to display erratic behaviour and finally goes missing. Phyllis learns of the young woman's past as a prostitute and, after tracking her down, tries to convince her that she does indeed deserve her new life. After reading up on new schools of thought linking cigarettes to cancer, Timothy Turner resorts to shock tactics to stop his parents' smoking habit. When Violet is incapacitated, Fred takes over running her shop, with disastrous results.
40Episode 6Lisa ClarkeHeidi Thomas21 February 2016 (2016-02-21)10.23
Thora, a middle-aged woman, is pretending to be pregnant in order to conceal the fact that her unmarried daughter is expecting a baby. The Turners go on holiday, necessitating the appointment of a locum doctor. When the locum gives bad advice over the phone to Thora, she unwittingly places her daughter's life in danger. Trixie has to use all her skill to save the situation, and Thora is left coming to terms with the consequences of concealing secrets. A number of violent assaults take place on women in Poplar, and Sister Mary Cynthia becomes the latest victim. Traumatised at first, she eventually finds the strength to lead the police to the attacker.
41Episode 7Darcia MartinHeidi Thomas28 February 2016 (2016-02-28)10.80
Patsy assists Daisy and her family of itinerant barge-dwellers, who eschew many of the trappings of modern society. When Daisy rejects the opportunity to give birth at the maternity home after accusing Patsy of meddling, Patsy must deliver the baby on a barge at the height of a violent storm. The advent of the release of the contraceptive pill causes a dilemma for Sister Julienne, who worries about the moral implications. A young man who was compelled to marry his girlfriend when she became pregnant and is distant from her comes into his own as a husband and father when his wife is stricken with a potentially fatal condition. Sister Evangelina returns to the convent but reveals that she has suffered a stroke.
42Episode 8Darcia MartinHeidi Thomas6 March 2016 (2016-03-06)11.46
The Turners receive the news that the drug thalidomide, which the doctor had regularly prescribed for women suffering from morning sickness, has been withdrawn after being linked with birth deformities of the kind observed in recent months in Poplar. He must deal with his own guilt as he and Shelagh, with the help of Phyllis and Patsy, begin an effort to link the drug to the affected patients. A young man, recently returned to Poplar, makes haste to marry his Australian fiancee before the arrival of their baby, who is born at the couple's reception. After a brief return to work and struggles with her health, Sister Evangelina has a second stroke and dies, leaving the Nonnatus House community devastated and the people of the East End lining up to pay their respects.

text: Series 6 (2017)[edit]

text:
Christmas specialNo.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]43Christmas specialSyd MacartneyHeidi Thomas25 December 2016 (2016-12-25)10.34
Most of the Nonnatus House staff travel to a tiny rural mission hospital in South Africa, which is threatened with closure. There they hold a well-attended oral polio vaccination clinic. They find the health of the patients severely threatened by a dwindling and dirty water supply, and must try to convince a local land-owner with a grudge against the establishment to allow a new life-saving pipeline to run across his farm.  They also must deliver a baby out in the bush when their only lorry breaks down, and cope with a distraught woman with false pregnancy, and a polio patient who was carried all day on his brother's back. When the hospital's only doctor is herself hospitalised with a life-threatening illness, it falls to Trixie to deliver a baby by Caesarean section. Tom proposes to Barbara and the couple get engaged.

text:
Series 6No.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]44Episode 1Sheree FolksonHeidi Thomas22 January 2017 (2017-01-22)10.40
Returning from South Africa (with the exception of Trixie, who is to remain at the clinic for two months), the staff are surprised to find that the stern Sister Ursula (Harriet Walter) has been placed in charge of Nonnatus House, with Sister Julienne relegated to lesser duties. Phyllis helps a mother who is desperate to escape her violent husband. Concerns are raised for the mental health of Sister Mary Cynthia, and she is sent away to the mother house. Shelagh learns she is expecting a baby, while Patsy receives a letter from Hong Kong informing her that her father is terminally ill.
45Episode 2Sheree FolksonHarriet Warner29 January 2017 (2017-01-29)10.57
Sister Ursula's strict rule at Nonnatus House continues, and she comes into conflict with both Patsy and Sister Winifred when she dictates that the staff should not become emotionally involved with patients. Shelagh is caught up in the aftermath of an explosion at a warehouse, along with former army nurse Valerie Dyer (Jennifer Kirby), and subsequently campaigns for better facilities for the workmen, with the help of a young father who was injured in the blast and fears he has been blinded before he even got to see his child. Phyllis begins to realise the extent of Patsy's relationship with Delia. Patsy helps an expectant mother who faces the prospect of a difficult birth due to her achondroplasia, and the case makes her realise that she needs to tend to her dying father, prompting her to leave for Hong Kong.
46Episode 3James LarkinCarolyn Bonnyman5 February 2017 (2017-02-05)11.03
Proposed government reforms to the way maternity care is provided mean that Dr Turner and Shelagh must prepare for an inspection of the maternity home and face the prospect of its closure. During the inspection, Shelagh is rushed to the hospital due to complications with her own pregnancy. Sister Ursula's latest edict at Nonnatus House is that the midwives must spend no longer than 20 minutes at each appointment.  Under pressure due to the time limit, Barbara fails to notice that a baby is suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning due to a faulty water heater, and the baby is rushed to hospital with her life in the balance. Chastened by the incident and the effect of her attempted reforms, Sister Ursula returns to the mother house, restoring Sister Julienne to the helm at Nonnatus House. Trixie returns from South Africa, but, having stayed at the mother house during her journey home, expresses concerns that Sister Mary Cynthia was not there.
47Episode 4James LarkinHeidi Thomas12 February 2017 (2017-02-12)10.86
An expectant mother struggling with debt since her husband left her decides that the solution to her problems is to give her baby to her childless cousin. However, when the child arrives she finds she cannot part with it.  The incident has a particular impact on Tom, who reveals that he himself was adopted.  Shelagh and Dr Turner face an anxious wait for news on their baby's condition, but when they hear the baby's heartbeat, they are relieved to learn that it is still alive. Sister Julienne secures funding to recruit a new midwife, but the search proves fruitless until she remembers former army nurse Valerie Dyer, who happily accepts the job.
48Episode 5Lisa ClarkAndrea Gibb19 February 2017 (2017-02-19)11.29
Fred's cousin Ivy dies, leaving behind her son, Reggie, a 21-year-old with Down's syndrome. Fred and Violet take him in, but realising that his living with them indefinitely would be impractical, must decide whether the best option would be to commit him to a mental institution.  While visiting the austere Linchmere Hospital, Fred and Sister Monica Joan are shocked to find Sister Mary Cynthia a patient there.  They then find a much friendlier facility that offers gardening therapy and place Reggie there instead. Inspired by an expectant mother with very poor dental hygiene, Dr Turner spearheads a programme to improve the teeth of the borough's residents, during which Trixie is introduced to handsome dentist Christopher Dockerill (Jack Hawkins).
49Episode 6Lisa ClarkLouise Ironside26 February 2017 (2017-02-26)10.82
Sister Mary Cynthia is released from the mental institution and returns to Nonnatus House.  Her mental health issues persist, however, and she is eventually sent to the gentler Northfield Hospital near Birmingham. Valerie deals with the case of a woman from Somaliland, who was subjected to female genital mutilation as a child, leading to a complicated birth and a clash of cultures over the practice. Tensions run high during the Cuban missile crisis.
50Episode 7Syd MacartneyHeidi Thomas5 March 2017 (2017-03-05)10.40
Rhoda and Bernie Mullucks, whose daughter Susan was born with severely deformed limbs due to the effects of thalidomide, investigate the possibility of her being fitted with artificial limbs, but the experience causes tensions in their own relationship. Driving back from a successful delivery, Phyllis knocks over one of the family's other children with her car and is left devastated by the possible consequences. Trixie suspects that Christopher is seeing another woman, but learns that he actually has a child from a prior marriage, which he had not previously disclosed. In return for his revelation, she reveals to him her own struggles with alcoholism. Delia learns that Patsy's father has died in Hong Kong.
51Episode 8Syd MacartneyHeidi Thomas12 March 2017 (2017-03-12)10.64
Barbara is distraught that her vicar father has accepted a missionary post overseas and will not be able to officiate at her wedding, so she brings the date forward and her friends rally round to help her organise the event in just three weeks. Shelagh gives birth to a baby boy. A mother who has been taking the contraceptive pill without her husband's knowledge develops a pulmonary embolism and dies, sparking concerns about the safety of the medication. Trixie agrees to meet Christopher's daughter, Alexandra. Patsy returns from Hong Kong and pledges her love for Delia.

text: Series 7 (2018)[edit]

text:
Christmas specialNo.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]52Christmas specialSyd MacartneyHeidi Thomas25 December 2017 (2017-12-25)10.38
The exceptionally harsh winter of 1962–63 causes disruption for the residents of Poplar.  Valerie seeks to reassure an unmarried expectant mother that her partner, who is not the father, will be able to love the baby as his own. But Valerie delivers the baby one month premature which she believes is stillborn, leaving all three grieving.  On her way back to Nonnatus House, however, she discovers that the baby is actually alive.  The death of a local man leads Sister Julienne to discover a dark history of emotional, physical and sexual abuse that have split the family. Tom and Barbara depart for Birmingham after he is appointed to a temporary post there. Meanwhile, Shelagh is forced to return to work as the weather increases pressure on Nonnatus and the practice.

text:
Series 7No.overallEpisodeDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateUK viewers(millions) [12]53Episode 1Syd MacartneyHeidi Thomas21 January 2018 (2018-01-21)9.87
With Barbara away and Patsy and Delia having also departed, young Jamaican midwife Lucille Anderson (Leonie Elliott) joins the staff at Nonnatus House.  Phyllis crosses swords with formidable policeman Sergeant Woolf while handling the case of an elderly woman who is dying of cancer but refuses to leave her house even as the street around her is demolished.  Handling the case of a single mother helps Trixie come to terms with the fact that boyfriend Christopher wishes to take their relationship further.
54Episode 2Claire WinyardLouise Ironside28 January 2018 (2018-01-28)9.46
Lucille experiences bigotry because of her West Indian background, and when a young woman unexpectedly suffers a stroke shortly after giving birth, her domineering mother blames Lucille.  An expectant mother wishes her husband to be present at the birth, but he refuses.  When his wife goes into labour, however, he must assist with the birth.  The arrival of a beautiful young Hungarian au pair, Magda, shakes up the Turners' household.
55Episode 3Claire WinyardKelly Jones4 February 2018 (2018-02-04)10.01
An expectant mother is diagnosed with the degenerative neurological disorder Huntington's disease, and quickly deteriorates to the point where she is unable to look after her children. Magda is shocked to discover that she is pregnant; after reading the Turners' medical books, she steals ergometrine from Nonnatus House in an attempt to induce an abortion, but puts her own life in danger. Fred and Violet organise a charity beauty contest. Concerned for his young daughter, Trixie ends her relationship with Christopher and turns to drink once again.
56Episode 4Rebecca JohnsonLauren Klee & Heidi Thomas11 February 2018 (2018-02-11)10.27
A Pakistani woman is aghast to find that, during a return to Pakistan, her husband has taken a second wife, a teenager who is now expecting a baby.  Unable to have children herself, she is initially resentful of the second wife, but comes to her assistance when the young woman finds motherhood difficult.  Sister Monica Joan is diagnosed with cataracts and risks losing her sight, but refuses to have an operation until Fred persuades her otherwise. Trixie's personal problems continue to increase and she is granted a leave of absence for six months.
57Episode 5Rebecca JohnsonHelen Blakeman18 February 2018 (2018-02-18)10.04
Rumours that a newly arrived sailor from Nigeria is suffering from smallpox cause panic in the community, and he hides away in fear and shame.  After determining that he instead has leprosy, the midwives find a place for him to receive healing care in a residential facility.  Lucille endeavours to assist a pregnant woman who has developed a phobia of giving birth after an earlier traumatic delivery.  Tom and Barbara return to Poplar.
58Episode 6Emma SullivanLouise Ironside25 February 2018 (2018-02-25)10.06
An Irish family with two children and a third on the way arrive in Poplar to take over the newsagent's shop, but the husband is killed in a car crash. When the shop is damaged by a fire, Barbara and Fred lead efforts to get the family back on their feet.  Valerie and Lucille lead health and relationship classes for teen girls at the youth club, but a stern mother complains about the sexual education.  When Valerie digs deeper, she finds that the mother's attitude is coloured by her own sister's promiscuous behaviour in her teenage years. Valerie helps the mother track down her sister, who had been committed to an asylum. After complaining of a cold, Barbara is rushed to hospital with suspected septicemia. Meanwhile, Sister Monica Joan undergoes successful cataract surgery but must endure an annoying, talkative roommate in hospital.
59Episode 7Syd MacartneyAndrea Gibb4 March 2018 (2018-03-04)10.12
Barbara's condition is diagnosed as meningococcal septicemia.  At first she seems to be making a recovery, but she subsequently begins to deteriorate and dies, leaving everyone devastated. Dr Turner assists at a remand home, where he encounters a teenaged car thief, who is the same age as Timothy, but has a pregnant wife. Dr Turner tries to help him plead his case in court and later to cope in prison to overcome depression and bullying by other inmates.
60Episode 8Syd MacartneyHeidi Thomas11 March 2018 (2018-03-11)9.56
The staff all find the aftermath of Barbara's funeral hard to handle, and Valerie tries to aid a grieving Tom by organising Barbara's things to give away. They find comfort in organising a birthday celebration for Sister Monica Joan, but their joy is interrupted by the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. An expectant mother prepares for single motherhood after leaving her philandering husband, but she is distraught to learn that her widowed father has been in a long-term relationship with a man — who is now suffering from dementia and must move in.

text: Notes[edit]

text: Jump up ^ The fourth series onward are based on 28-day data rather than 7-day data.


document_title: Larry Simms

question_text: who played baby dumpling in the blondie movies

text: Larry Simms

text: Life and career[edit]

text: Larry Lee Simms worked as a child model from the age of two years and was discovered by a Hollywood talent scout when he appeared in a 1937 Saturday Evening Post advertisement.[1] His first film for Hollywood was The Last Gangster (1937), where he played Edward G. Robinson's young son. Simms got well-known with his appearances as Alexander "Baby Dumpling" Bumstead in the popular Blondie film series starring Penny Singleton. Between 1938 and the end of the series in 1950, Simms appeared as Alexander in 28 films of the Blondie comedies and was a regular cast member. The child actor earned at one time $750 a week.[2] In 1946, Simms joined the cast of the Blondie radio program, portraying Alexander there as he had in movies.[3]

text: Larry Simms sometimes also appeared in movies out of the Blondie Series, most notably in two films of Frank Capra: He played one of the sons of Governor Hopper (Guy Kibbee) in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Pete Bailey, the oldest son of James Stewart's George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Not very interested in acting, he quit show business to join the Navy (he appeared in uniform as himself in the Columbia Screen Snaphots short, Hollywood Grows Up), then studied aeronautical engineering at California Polytech. Simms later worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California and around the world as an engineer until his retirement. In his last years, Larry Simms lived in Thailand with his wife.[4]

text: Filmography[edit]

text:
The Last Gangster (1937)
Blondie film series (28 films; 1938-1950)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
The Gay Sisters (1942)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Golden Earrings (1947)
Song of Love (1947)
Madame Bovary (1949)
Her First Romance (1951)
Screen Snapshots Series 33, Hollywood Grows Up (1954)