[14497] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Denial of Service Attacks disguised as Spam...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Osborne)
Mon Jan 5 12:06:46 1998
From: Eric Osborne <osborne@notcom.com>
To: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 12:01:14 -0500 (EST)
Cc: nanog@merit.edu, inet-access@earth.com, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <199712312030.AC07497@world.std.com> from "Barry Shein" at Dec 31, 97 03:30:05 pm
>
>
> [The purpose of this note is to change your thinking about Spam]
>
> Enormous amounts of this so-called "spam" is nothing of the sort, it
> is malicious people using mail ports to conduct denial of service
> attacks. And the sooner we wake up to this fact the better.
>
> We need a new word for this and to publicize this new
> attitude. Because as soon as someone says "spam" all that comes to
> mind is a Sanford Wallace type pathetically trying to make a buck with
> annoying advertising, and people (in particular law enforcement) just
> won't give "annoying advertising" a moment's thought.
Good point. Perhaps the best analogies for the law types are the junk-faxing
laws. It's outsiders maliciously consuming a particular resource.
> The fact that not one of these is getting past our filters doesn't
> seem to discourage this person, not even over a period of days.
Yeah, but the person sending them may not be able to tell that they're
not getting through.
> I don't believe this person is actually selling anything.
>
> Can I repeat that?
>
> I DON'T BELIEVE THIS PERSON IS ACTUALLY SELLING ANYTHING
>
Out of curiosity, have you looked at the content of the message? It's
interesting that this may be a DoS attack, where there are other things one
can do to try and deny service.
(Although, setting up somebody else's mail server to repeatedly connect is
in fact a pretty legit DoS in and of itself...)
> We're being fooled, we're allowing criminals to operate without
> challenge.
>
> --
> -Barry Shein
>
Are they criminals? I don't know if I want to get into a debate about
"criminal" vs. "doing something nasty that's not been declared illegal".
Either way, I agree that there should be moved to curb this sort of repeated
contact, whether it's a deliberate attack or not.
eric
