Artists Against 419 Releases Mugu Marauder

An anonymous reader writes "Similar in scope to the (now defunct) screensaver created by Lycos that targeted spam sites, the newly-released Mugu Marauder is intended to take fraudulent bank sites off the air by sponging up their bandwidth. Mugu Marauder can be downloaded at www.aa419.org/mm/ It's currently only available for Windows, though a Linux port is allegedly in the works."

Comments

FP

[michaelhood]

Beware of getting slammed by your ISP with a "friendly" letter, after consuming tons of bandwidth using something like this.

Yay (*sigh*)

[n0dalus]

Once these sites get hit they redirect the dns towards legitamate services and change addresses.
So this will probably just end up DDoS'ing the real banks instead of the fake ones, these fake banks move around a lot and create extra damage in their wake as a result of something like this.
Fighting fire with fire just doesn't work like it should.

another dumb idea

[RMH101]

Just like the Lycos screensaver that strangled spammer's bandwidth by not-quite-DDOS-ing them, this is a stupid idea. Legally you'd be opening yourself up to all kind of problems running this kind of thing: ISPs don't tend to take to kindly to this sort of denial of service attack.
It's not sexy, or headline-grabbing, but the correct way to go about this is the same as it's always been: go after the ISPs to pull their accounts. If they're RFC-ignorant, add their IP blocks to the usual blacklists until they comply or are connected to an intranet.

Linux/unix version

[CvD]

Copy & paste the sites that are listed on the front page of the link in the article into a file called sites.txt, each on one line, and then run the following command:

while true; do wget -q -i sites.txt --delete-after ; done

A daemonized version shouldn't be that hard to write, just have it parse the URLs on the front page out every day, and re-run wget on the new list.

Happy marauding...

Gee, thats great

[gowen]

Vigilante justive via DDOS. Well, that won't set a horrible precedent for people knobbling the web site's of those they don't like. Who's next? Radical pro-life groups DDOS'ing websites with abortion information?

(Yes, I know this has a slippery-slope element to it, but there are plenty of activist groups out there willing to be vigilantes, because they believe their actions to be either unambiguously moral, or divinely inspired.)

Re:Gee, thats great

[gowen]

Or that. It was an example, not and exhaustive list. Would you like me to have enumerate *every* possible example?

In short, I'm merely pointing out that accepting certain types of anti-social, vigilante behaviour (DDOS) *only* because we belive in their cause (hurting scammers) leads us very difficult moral ground when people with whom one does not agree use the same tactics.

Think about it.

[Sheetrock]

One successful 419 scam (where they soak some victim for hundreds of thousands of dollars) will pay quite handily for one of these fake websites, DoS or no DoS.

On the other hand, the rest of us pay thrice: once for the victimization of regular people not yet wise to this game, once for the waste of bandwidth because of the huge amount of spam being sent out for this scam, and now once for do-gooders pumping loads of worthless data back through our shared Internet at these websites, which are replaced faster than they go down.

On the surface it looks like a good idea, but it's just adding to the damage like all these other vigilante anti-spam tactics. A better technical solution already exists; switch from e-mail to instant messaging within a company and save all your instant messages.

Re:Think about it.

[macshit]

A better technical solution already exists; switch from e-mail to instant messaging within a company and save all your instant messages.

You've got to be kidding...

That's like switching to pogo sticks because you're afraid of car-jacking.

How about instead: (1) use less brain-dead mail clients, and (2) educate your employees so they're not (quite) so brain-dead themselves. The advantage of being a company is that you can actually do these sorts of things.

[I know, I know, some companies demand brain-death. I suppose it's pogo sticks for them.]

Leave well alone

[mattbee]

I don't care who you're or how pretty the screensaver, just don't download programs for network abuse like this and expect your ISP to take it lightly. If you really want to take action against a phising site, call the ISP hosting it and complain to them. Same principle, less innocent parties affected along the way. If you don't get a response from that ISP, call the ISP further upstream... this is how we deal with network abuse; it's slow but it's legal, and it works.

Please somebody DDoS them.

[Kickasso]

aa419.org, that is. They apparently think it's legal and acceptable, so they won't complain.

Block list

[blackest_k]

It makes far more sense for a centralised block list, regularly updated, hosted by a reputible body.

A small change in functionality to your web browser so that when you attempt to connect to a site on your blocklist. your browser informs you and the reason why and then asks you if you want to proceed anyway.

its a much more economic use of resources and could be added to by local police agencys as victims become known or perhaps a phishing notify button added to our browsers.

when we wander upon a site thats dodgy that url can be passed on to the hosts of the blocking lists, a site would be verified to prevent malicious use and if checked out as being ok, it wouldnt be reexamined till a certain number of other referals took place.

No waste of bandwidth, no denial of service attack on any site just a hazard warning in your browser that the site may be harmful.

perhaps the banking sites might even care to host such a list.

Re:Is this

[DaHat]

Probably not.

It's kinda like stealing pot from a dealer, chances are, he's not going to report the theft.

Regardless of what is worse, 419ing of DoSing, both are bad and both are illegal, and just like copyright infringement on P2P, people will try to justify it "it's not like I am going to pay for it anyway" and "they already have enough money".