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Researchers discover new distributed denial of post office box attack:
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 15:16:38 -0400
Researchers discover new distributed denial of post office box attack: In a paper called "Defending Against an Internet-based Attack on the Physical World, <http://www.avirubin.com/scripted.attacks.pdf> " researchers at Johns Hopkins University and AT&T Labs describe an Internet attack in which a victim is automatically subscribed to hundreds of thousands of catalogue request forms that are available online. "What's interesting about this attack is that it exploits the boundary between cyberspace and the real world," Bruce Schneier notes in this week's issue of Crypto-gram <http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0304.html> . "The reason spamming normally doesn't work with physical mail is that sending a piece of mail costs money, and it's just too expensive to bury someone's house in mail. Subscribing someone to magazines and signing them up for embarrassing catalogs is an old trick, but it has limitations because it's physically difficult to do it on a large scale. But this attack exploits the automation properties of the Internet, the Web availability of catalog request forms, and the paper world of the Post Office and catalog mailings. All the pieces are required for the attack to work. And there's no easy defense. Companies want to make it easy for someone to request a catalog. If the attacker used an anonymous connection to launch his attack -- one of the zillions of open wireless networks would be a good choice -- I don't see how he would ever get caught. Even worse, it could take years for the victim to get his name off all of the mailing lists -- if he ever could." http://www.avirubin.com/scripted.attacks.pdf ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- Researchers discover new distributed denial of post office box attack: Dave Farber (Apr 16)