I know that Pat supports the "flood the spammer" service provided by
Blue Security. It's interesting to note that the spammers have been
fighting back (which I suppose is testament that the service has some
effect). There's an interesting description of the attack posted on
the SANS.org Handler's Diary website:
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?n&storyid=1311
The Internet is becoming a very unfriendly place. :-/
John Meissen
jmeissen@aracnet.com
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, indeed, the internet is becoming
less and less friendly every day. All this unfriendlyness began
several years ago when the intruders moved into our virtual community.
_They_ thought they could change all the rules around; _they_ thought
the rest of us were dimwits and imbiciles who would not dare to
stop them or say 'NO' to them. They bullied us around for years and
years without resistance, or very little resistance. When some of us
started to make resistance, the enablers were shocked. Didn't _we_
understand that _they_ (the enablers) were the only ones who knew
anything about anything? Didn't we understand that the spammer-scammers
had rights also (oh, boo-hoo!) and they might sue us if we offered any
resistance? So the enablers began _attempting_ -- and that's all it
was, was a half-assed attempt -- to filter email. As the spammer-scammers
got more sophisicated, the enablers, like President Bush in 2003,
thought this war will be over in short order, also revved up their
filters. There was a lot of 'collateral damage'; like any war, many
innocent people got hurt, valid email never made it to its destination,
etc, legitmate digests never got delivered, etc. Finally some of us
decided enough was enough; I think it was about the time the ratio of
spam-scam versus legit reached 80-85 percent; we were not going to
wait until the ratio reached a hundred percent for even though that is
theoretically possible it is quite unlikely since there will always
be at least a few (very few!) pieces of legitmate mail in transit in
the queue somewhere to shave off a percentage point or two from the
level of !absolutely! (allspam-scam). When we saw the ratio reach the
95 percent mark a few times, we said 'that is close enough'.
Years ago, some of us began outing the spammer-scammers by revealing
lots of personal data about them: for example, their personal
telephone numbers, the addresses where they lived in their white-trash
trailer park homes, where they were employed, even their driver's
records. At that point, we had to start fighting the enablers as well;
for after all, even spammer-scammers have 'privacy rights' you know --
oh boo-hoo, this is so sad, and who were _we_ -- how dare we! --
violate their rights. No matter that the rest of us here in the
virtual village have not had an unmolested postal system for many
years; by God, you better not harm or do DDoS on the spammer-scammers.
As far as I am concerned, there is _no_ realistic expectation where
communications on the net are concerned. If the spammer-scammers are
doing wholesale DDoS on legitimate sites and the legitimate sites are
responding in kind, _to protect what was ours all along_ (and that is
the key phrase) that suits me fine. To hell with the enablers and
all their fanciful ideas about essentially ignoring it by making
feeble and ineffectual attempts to filter it out. PAT]
jmeissen@aracnet.com