[4412] in WWW Security List Archive
Spam_Mail_Hoax
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Unknown Species)
Fri Feb 14 04:42:37 1997
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 17:57:28 -0500
To: www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
From: usp@usp.com.au (Unknown Species)
Cc: sneakers@CS.YALE.EDU
Errors-To: owner-www-security@ns2.rutgers.edu
This is a true story ... only the names have been changed to protect the
innocent.
I am a web slave for many corporate & private companies on the Internet,
often things run pretty smoothly.... and then sometimes they don't!
36 hours ago I was contacted by one of my clients (called XYZ) they were in
a panic because their mailbox had filled up with over 200 "undeliverable
mail" responses, and they couldn't get any of their email down from the
server. I jumped onto their mailserrver & launched a shell program to view
the messages. They were all return emails from a massive mail-out of some
"country & western singer" mailing list. The client XYZ had been written
into the mass mailout as the SENDER!
Thus the address in the original post that were no longer active bounced
back to XYZ's mailbox....
I had just deleted all of the spam mail when I received another message
from company XYZ that their web site had just gone down!! (days like this I
don't need).. What followed was a barrage of email back & forth across the
planet ... Our Host server in the states (Provider ABC) had cut XYZ off for
mass mail violation!!!! ... I responded with emails crying "WE HAVE BEEN
FRAMED" , "WE HAVE DONE NOTHING"!.. the poor support person at ABC went
into a downward spiral (it was 2am their time) and said they could do
nothing till the boss arrived. (in the morning)
In the mean time I traced the original sender & found a chap called RK....
after a couple of threatening emails to him, he mailed me back apologising
& begging forgiveness (and his first child) .. he turned out to be an
innocent party like us!.
What had happened (supposedly) is that someone had sent a spam post out to
a massive mail-list with company XYZ as the sender. Company XYZ immediately
lost the ability to view their email as their mailbox filled up with
hundreds of return mails .... the Internet provider ABC received over
30,000 complaint emails & their server crashed a couple of times, they
immediately removed the www site of company XYZ in retaliation (a standard
proceedure by an otherwise great server).
Whoever perpetrated this heinous crime (and I WILL find them) achieved a
nice little social engineering process of massive hassle & inconvenience,
nothing too permanent or destructive as to render them wanted by the FBI
(or worse a mercenary Internet-hitman), but an inconvenience which tied up
24 hours of our collective time & cost a considerable amount of $$ in the
process. (the fucker *grin*)
This is a warning to users & providers alike ... don't get sucked in by
this one! (it is way too easily perpetrated!..... and way too easy to get
away with!)
Cheerz & Beware out there
Unknown Species
Nework Slave
