Bugtraq mailing list archives
Re: mail storm
From: rleonard () ferrotec ie (Roy Leonard)
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 09:24:18 +0100
I remember seeing references to this on the Net-abuse newsgroup ( I think It's in the FAQ). This method has been used by users who have been "spammed", to exact revenge on the "spammers". Usually the mail load gets so high, that the spammer is simply disusered, leaving a large disaster area in his wake, which the Sys-Op is left with. BTW, I don't agree with this kind of revenge! If the hacker subsribes mailing list to mailing list, etc...., the mailing list software may well be capable of stopping this. But surely it would be easier for the hacker to subscribe his enemy to N mailing lists? Is there any solution to this? Or do you simply hope that your users are friends with everyone else! Roy ...
Imagine the hacker picks 2n mailing lists, subscribing the i'th to the (i+n)th and the (i+n)th to the i'th, subscribing that person they really don't like to the 0..n-1'th, and finally, forging one message to each of the 0..n-1'th. Some (all? Doesn't seem likely from here) mailing list software would probably figure it out, but enough of them wouldn't that I suspect there'd be a nasty "e-mail storm" - an exponential growth of e-mail, analogous to the growth seen in a "broadcast storm".
-==- Roy Leonard + Tel: +353-1-295-2529 Firmware Development Engineer + Fax: +353-1-295-3625 rleonard () ferrotec ie "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" -==-
Current thread:
- Re: mail storm Roy Leonard (Aug 13)
- Re: mail storm zero cool (Aug 13)
- Re: mail storm Pete Ashdown (Aug 13)
- Re: mail storm Sean B. Hamor (Aug 13)
- setuid lp script Francis Liu (Aug 13)
- Re: setuid lp script Casper Dik (Aug 15)
- CERT Advisory CA-96.19 - Vulnerability in expreserve CERT Advisory (Aug 15)
- IRIX 5.3 and CA-96.19 - Vulnerability in expreserve? Mike Kienenberger (Aug 15)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: mail storm Brett L. Hawn (Aug 13)
- Re: mail storm John Ladwig (Aug 13)
- Re: mail storm C. Harald Koch (Aug 13)
(Thread continues...)