Slashdot Mirror
When Good Spammers Go Bad
pfleming writes "According to this blog article on BadTux by Eric Green, the constant harrassment of spammers has a price. You get a Cease and Desist letter- or more correctly, your ISP gets a C/D letter. But, if you're a hard core geek you just might get your site more notice as it gets mirrored out onto sympathetic hosts.
Also mirrored in other locations."
I was impressed with the article until I got to the comment "I mean, what do I care about what Windows losers get scammed out of?". Now I like Linux much as the next geek but thats just going to aliante people.
M$ might be a monopoly but at least they have bought some form of consistency
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Just failed to access his site. Lawyers may fail to shut it down, but slashdot can do it in seconds! :-)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
How much is the hourly cap? I have mirrored it, although the formatting of the rant is pretty dire
http://blue.doosh.net/~yarn/elgreen.html.gz[4k]
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
... You know the rest of it. Just as comic book characters have such a code, it would appear that computer geeks need one too.
It's obvious that the folks at evidence eliminator know a good bit about tech, and not enough about morality. A lot of other fine folks who run legit/non-shady companies have the same knowledge but don't use it to trick consumers into using their products (probably because they actually make something useful). Just because you have the power to do something doesn't mean you should use it. Imagine if the loyal slashdot crowd were to use our collective resources to advertise any one issue or cause.....
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
That this page generated a pop-up ad for Window Washer.
-- For evil to triumph it is enough that good men do nothing.
When good spammers go bad? Isn't that kind of pretentious thinking there are good spammers?
Help us build a better map!
I've got a file with ip addresses of spammers who've pissed me off enough to blacklist them. It's available at http://enthalpy.homelinux.org/spammers.txt.
/etc/firewall/spammers.txt`
/23 in the iptables might be too 'clumsy' for some. You can use /24 which blocks a smaller group of computers around the ip address in the list. /23 works fine for us.
;)
I use the following script:
for I in `cat
do
echo Blacklisting Spammer: $I/23
iptables -A INPUT -s $I/23 -j REJECT
done
to blacklist them.
I personally guanantee that all the addresses in this list have spammed me. If you don't believe / trust me, fine - don't use it. I use it on a production server and have never had any complaints...
By the way, the
The list is 98% asian dsl accounts.
Also, for an alternative solution, try this:
smbclient -L $IP_ADDRESS
where $IP_ADDRESS is the address of the computer that spammed you.
If you're in luck, you'll find yourself connecting to a Windows computer. It'll ask you for a password. Hit enter. If you're still in luck, it will list the available shares, and a list of server names. Pick a server name. If there are more than one, try each one
Now, download and compile 'smbdie'. Search for it on google. Run:
smbdie -i $IP_ADDRESS -p 139 -t $SERVER_NAME
where $SERVER_NAME is the server name you just picked from smbclient's output ( above ). If you are still in luck, you will have rebooted the spammer's computer ( it blue-screens ), and maybe even caused some data loss.
Really don't like them? Add the smbdie command to a cron job. I've found most spammers have fixed ip addresses, and they become available to reboot again withing approximately 2-3 minutes.
Enjoy!
You're new here, right?
That can work for either party, there's nothing new about people filing law suits in order to prevent someone from doing the right thing. It is important to remember however when dealing with such assholes that a letter from a lawyer is not as intimidating and many people think. Lawyers write letters which have little or not legal value all the time, I've received some myself when my old landlord and his wife got divorced and were fighting over who was the landowner. The letter itself wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, but it did have an official legal letterhead. Always make sure you know your legal rights and never trust the other guy's lawyer to tell them to you.
When good Spammers go bad?
:: Jonsey's Head Explodes ::
Logically, the only good spammer, is a dead spammer.
Therefore, all good spammers are past their experation date already.
So logically, all good spammers must be bad.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
from the whip-lash-from-slashdot dept.
vaderhelmet writes "According to this server error on BadTux by the webserver, the constant loading of pages has a price. You get a 425 error- or more correctly, you cannot connect to the host. But, if you're a hard core geek you just might get your site more notice as it gets mirrored out onto sympathetic hosts. Also slashdotted in other locations."
Mirrored from news.badtux.net
Eric Green doesn't use Windows very much. A long-time Linux user and advocate since 1995, Windows software interests him about as much as, say, the price of pork bellies on the Chicago futures market. So why is the publisher of a much-spammed Windows software product trying to shut him down? Welcome to the wild and whacky story of the strangest bunch of spammer scammers on the Internet: those whacky folks at Robin Hood Software whose overpriced "Evidence Eliminator" software is spammed on every Internet forum on a regular basis. This is a tale of spammers and spam, and an unlikely spam fighter who has learned that spammers suck even worse than most people think. And in the end, it's the story of how spam fighters around the globe support each other when the spammers decide to go after their critics and detractors. It all started back in June 2000. At the time, I was researching encryption algorithms for use in a new software product. There was this product called 'Evidence Eliminator', produced by a company named 'Robin Hood Software', being hyped on the sci.crypt and alt.privacy newsgroups. Curious, I went to the web site of the publisher of the software. After being subjected to flash animation, popups threatening me with jail if I didn't buy Evidence Eliminator, and no way to contact the makers of the product other than a web form, I decided: "These people aren't credible." And said so. From my work account. Big mistake. I didn't realize I was dealing with spammers. I thought they'd be interested in seeing what an industry veteran thought. But there was no response to my message on the sci.crypt newsgroup. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it. I went on with his life. But Andy Churchill, one of the principals of Robin Hood Software, wasn't so eager to let go. Imagine my surprise when, in early 2001, I ran a Google search for my name and discovered that I was part of a vast conspiracy by some strange New World Order collection of villains to destroy the makers of "the best security product on the market"! Naturally I wasn't happy. And as someone who isn't shy about expressing his opinion, I expressed it, sending EMAIL to Robin Hood Software demanding that they remove any mention of me from their site. Andy Churchill of Robin Hood Software iadmits to have received that EMAIL, but says, "we deleted it". There was no response from Robin Hood Software. So I did what comes naturally to any Linux geek: I put up a web page. Which Robin Hood Software swiftly (and in violation of my copyright) duplicated on their own web site, with "False." (no explanation) beside each of my points as to why you shouldn't buy their software. And as time went by and, thanks to the readers of my site, I accumulated more and more evidence about Robin Hood Software's activities, including evidence that they were behind the "push ICQ" spamming of their product (an EMAIL to their affiliates urging them to do that kind of spamming), Robin Hood Software's web site became yet more lurid, even to the point of duplicating a copyrighted gag photo (cropping out Agent Binks) on their own web site. These people don't appear to be too stable -- definite candidates for the aluminum foil beanie award. In early 2002 I purchased the domain name 'evidence-eliminator-sucks.com', and did a major overhaul of the web site to try to organize the by-then large amount of information that I'd accumulated about Robin Hood Software and its activities. By that time it was clear that these weren't nice people. Deceptive claims in their advertising, huge amounts of spam originating from their affiliates, ia browser hijack virus that hijacks people's web browsers and redirects them to the Evidence Eliminator home page, and their continued attempts to disparage their critics and competitors on their aptly-named Dis-Information page pretty much are a Major Clue. I also launched the "Evidence Eliminator Sucks Conspiracy" -- both a statement on what I feels is Robin Hood Software's paranoia in their rantings about a "vast conspiracy" out
Erm, you mean like Microsoft Bad, Linux Good?
Blockwars: multiplayer and it's free!
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
... if someone wrote a nice piece of mass mailing software that would be free, look great, run fast, spam people like there's no tomorrow and available under a "free but get your paws of my source code" license? I mean, we don't want the spammers to be able to realize that their latest toy doesn't actually send anything and has more backdoors then a Win95 alpha version, now do we? And it automagically has to hook up to a webcam if available, so we can have a laugh as a spammer realizes all his computers are now hosting illegal crap like Britney/Nsync/Linkin Park MP3s, various bad Disney animations as MPGs and files like "SCO_Unixware_kernel.tar.gz" while a RIAA/MPAA APC drives his/her front window!
Bonus points if said program makes a AYB quote the moment the spammer is sued into the nine hells themselves!
Hate me!
How funny! I just discovered and read a story on Kuro5hin about this, written by Mr. Green himself.
He posted the article to Kuro5hin too. You can find it here.
"Slashdotted!
Not available at the moment due to the Slashdot Effect. Will be back shortly as a (much faster) static page. Thank you for your patience."
So should this be a new error message? I'm thinking 501 - Slashdot...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
You aren't actually crashing the "spammer's" box. You're crashing the box of some poor sucker who doesn't know enough to that he should have a firewall (software or hardware), between his computer and his cable/dsl modem. Meanwhile, the spammer just moves on to another of his pool of tens of thousands of broadband IP's which have computers attached to them EXACTLY THE SAME WAY.
So congratualtions, you have successfully made some poor guy's day miserable because his box keeps rebooting and he hasn't an fscking clue why, and you have done exactly nothing to hinder the spammers. Keep up the great work!
...Birth?
--NJ state court judge, on acquitting Allen Ginsburg of smoking pot in a newspaper quote.
On that note, I shot five people last night. Sorry to everyone affected.
---------
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I got a call from some sales guy from some company once. I was busy, so I told him to send me some literature. Got it, looked at it, wasn't interested, so pitched it.
Apparently the sales guy thought that by sending me junk, he now has the right to call me whenever. First time I told him I wasn't interested, second and third times I added not to call me back. Fourth time I laid into him - he called by bosses number. Fifth time I did some research and sent his boss and a few other high-up's in the company an e-mail explaining how I had nicely asked to stop being bothered by the company and that they have now left a very bad impression, and that I talk with lot of other people that they may want to deal with, and am not afraid of sharing my opinion of a company if asked.
The VP of the company sent me an e-mail back saying (THE SALES GUY) IS DOING A GOOD JOB GETTING THE NAME OUT THERE SO BUY SOME PRODUCTS FROM US. (no lie - all caps).
Upshot is I've not been called anymore.
I look at it like X-10 - they've made some good products, but as soon as marketting/sales starts to lead, even the best company can get dragged downhill.
Well, it wasn't as if I was planning for my *blog* to get slashdotted. But once I realized what was happening (i.e., why my web server's hard drive light was on solid!), it wasn't a big deal. After all, I already knew that GeekCode was slow as a slug, the only reason I used it was because it was the easiest of the PHP-based weblogs for me to modify, and my blog has never gotten more than a few thousand hits a day so the speed didn't matter. But if everybody's coming there for one article... (shrug) serve it to them statically. My web server (which is running FreeBSD, BTW, not Linux) is now quite happy.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Great idea, however, if you really want to fuck with them (at least in a legal way), use -j DROP rather than -j REJECT. This should make their system wait for a timeout and thus tie up their spamming engine a bit (well, at least one thread of it)... See this article for more information.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
I prefer to think of it as "opt-out" . If they negletected to mention an optout link (or it doesnt work) you reboot there computer untill the mailing list is corrupted and your e-mail address is removed .
500 Internal Server Error
You'd have to start at at least 506 - but then that might be used by later http implementations501 Not Implemented
502 Bad Gateway
503 Service Unavailable
504 Gateway Timeout
505 HTTP Version not supported
better to just add a new block of response codes:
600 Server Slashdotted
601 Databaser fried
602 Redirect to Google Cache
603 Redirect to Goatse.cx
604 Random error from 4xx/5xx code
605 Cowboy Neal
Or just use the HTTP response that I seem to get a lot when viewing slashdot:
417 Expectation Failed
.02
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
As for their ethics, yes, their ethics suck. Their advertising says you'll go to jail if you don't use their product, they have popup scare ads that display your hard drive (if you're using Windows) and says that they're looking at your hard drive and you better buy their software or all those porn gifs will get you thrown in jail (it's a simple btw, with C:\ as the source -- i.e., it's just displaying your hard drive to yourself), and then of course there is the virus that their affiliates are sending around to hijack people's web browsers and point it back to the Evidence Eliminator site, and ... well. I think you're getting the picture now. These are not Nice Folks. And if we can trace that virus back to their offices, they will be wearing stripes soon.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
US law is much less restrictive. The First Amendment is held to encourage "robust debate", even if some the statements aren't entirely correct.
Ah, yes, that one. People were standing around outsides McDonalds restaurants giving out flyers that accused them of various unfortunate things. If memory serves, they took the flyer producers to court on defamation grounds, and successfully rebutted a couple of the points, notably including the fact that their food was found to be nutritious by the court. A few days later, the flyers were back, with the claims the court found against removed, and a big banner over the rest basically saying "PROVEN IN COURT!".
If ever there were an own goal in a legal case, that was probably it. Anyone have a link to detailed info any more? Makes fun reading if you've got a few minutes to kill. :-)
Incidentally, there is some legal protection for freedom of expression in the UK, including under the ECHR if memory serves. However, what's wrong with defamation law overriding freedom of expression? You want to be able to say anything you like with impunity, even if it's wrong and damaging to someone? I have no problem with a clear standard that if you want to say things negative things about someone else publicly then you have to be able to back them up. Why is that a problem, either in principle or in practice?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Today, VioPac would like to offer you a quiz. It's very easy, and will take only moments of your time. In fact, it only has one question, and it is this: What rocks more, Iron Maiden or Evidence Eliminator? Think about that carefully now.
The correct answer, of course, is Iron Maiden. In fact, there is very little out there that could beat Maiden in any contest you care to devise. Observe:
Simply put, the spammers at Evidence Eliminator have now threatened the ISP that hosts Evidence-Eliminator-Sucks.com with a libel suit in England. As intended, the ISP in question can't afford to defend itself in a foreign country. What this means is that every one of you, regardless of your nation of origin, should write to Iron Maiden immediately and ask them, politely of course, to find these EvElim scumbag spammers and beat the shit out of them.
Note: I don't think he's *really* serious about writing to Iron Maiden :-).
Send mail here if you want to reach me.