Spammer DDoS-By-Virus On spamhaus.org

McDutchie writes "Steve Linford of Spamhaus announced in a press release that the latest Wintel virus, W32/Mimail-E, was created by spammers for the specific purpose of DDoS'ing Spamhaus, Spamcop, and SPEWS. It's becoming more and more clear that the spambags are the ones behind the recent mess with the Windows viruses. They must really be getting desperate."

Comments

Spam is dying

[GotAnMP3]

Seriously, I've been getting less spam lately thanks to filters. Sure, it's not gone entirely, but it's a lot less of a hassle than it used to be. I sure hope this is a sign of things to come... If they're this desperate to stop anti-spammers, they gotta be in their throws of death.

Re:Spam is dying

[kfg]

Seriously, I've been getting less spam lately thanks to filters.

Getting less spam lately or seeing less spam?

The distinction is critical.

KFG

End of the line:

[eliza_effect]

Ironically, the spammers who try to "get tough" in this way will probably end up putting themselves out of business. They've only survived this long because of relative obscurity, but once these extra-malicious spammers are caught, there won't be much in the way of goodwill for the other, questionably legal ones. Good riddance.

Computer Crime

[silentbozo]

I've said it before, the feds should stop looking for super-uber-mega crackers. The biggest, most expensive, and most damaging ONGOING computer crime is spam. They're not idiots, and they're not harmless nuisances. They're quite capable, and have hired on many technically proficient guns to do their dirty work, cracking systems, running hordes of zombies, and trying to find exploits in every commercial and non-commercial system so they can send out ever more spam.

Get to work on eliminating spammers and much of our current crop of computer-related woes will just GO AWAY. The only people who would hate for this to happen are the spammers, the hired guns, and companies like Symantec...

A good thing really

[Ezza]

Anything that brings "spam" and "viruses" closer together in the public eye is bad for spammers in the long run.

And fortunately for the rest of us (or unfortunately depending on your point of view), this type of behaviour just makes spammers more of a target for legislation and law enforcement.

But they CAN do these viruses ...

[MAFIAA]

What beggars belief more is that a corp with the near-infinite resources of Microsoft still gives people a near-perfect vector for virus distribution. I'm sure if any one of us had 40Bn cash and 8 years (is that how old LookOut Express is now?) we could either code or hire programmers to code an email client that wasnt broken.

Of course.. if they ever mended LookOut the AV guys would go out of business overnight but that's a whole new consipracy theory involving large cash backhanders and deliberately broken coding there... :o)