Re: Denial of Service Attacks disguised as Spam...

[Jim Dixon <jdd () vbc net>]

On Mon, 5 Jan 1998, Barry Shein wrote:

> I'm not talking in metaphors, I'm not saying that some spammers IN
> EFFECT cause denial of service attacks.
>
> I am saying that individuals who want to harm sites, and have nothing
> whatsoever to sell, act like spammers to perform their maliciousness.
>
> For example, they take some old "MAKE MONEY FAST!!!" text and bang it
> at a site 300,000 times in a day, as fast as they can, hoping to cause
> that site grief, just like a smurf or SYN attack or whatever.

A variant of this approach is that taken by a customer of a customer
of ours, who subscribed someone he didn't like to 130 very active 
email lists.  Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you 
look at these things) he did it rather carelessly, we keep extensive
logs, and the FBI and the UK Computer Crime unit were both very 
interested.

--
Jim Dixon                  VBCnet GB Ltd           http://www.vbc.net
tel +44 117 929 1316                             fax +44 117 927 2015