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Blue Security Gives up the Fight
bblboy54 writes "According to The Washington Post, Blue Security has closed its doors, which can be confirmed by the Blue Security application failing to work today and their domain no longer resolving. Blue Security's CEO is quoted in the article: "It's clear to us that [quitting] would be the only thing to prevent a full-scale cyber-war that we just don't have the authority to start," Reshef said. "Our users never signed up for this kind of thing." You have to wonder where it goes from here. It seems an effective method has been found but more than a small private company could handle. Will someone else adapt this concept, or does the internet world give up?"
I'm a recent new Blue member. Spam to my work, gmail and home accounts has plummetted thanks to Blue Frog. And to whiners who moan about "vigilantism", blow me. Fight fire with fire.
Trolling is a art,
If you want to be an anti-spam advocate, if you want to write software or maintain a list or provide a service that identifies spam or blocks spam or targets spam in any way, you will be attacked. You will be attacked by professionals who have more money than you, more resources than you, better programmers than you, and no scruples at all. They want to make money, this is how they have decided to make money, they really can make a lot of money, and youre getting in their way.
[...]Someone challenged me, Well, how am I supposed to continue hosting these low-barrier discussions? I'm sorry, but I don't know. To quote Bruce Schneier, "I feel rather like the physicist who just explained relativity to a group of would-be interstellar travelers, only to be asked, 'How do you expect us to get to the stars, then?' I'm sorry, but I don't know that, either."
From Dive Into Mark (which doesn't seem to be responding, so try Google's cache.)
Carousel is a lie!
What about a solution like the SETI project? A nice graphical screensaver that uses spare processor cycles to send email spam to known spammers. It could even display something funny like a graph showing how much harassment you're causing.
However, I don't think any kind of attack spam with spam solution is worth it. We need to either redesign the protocol, marginalize the spammers, or make it very illegal and put them in jail. Sure, you might argue that direct marketing through email really isn't illegal (junk snail mail sure isn't), but I think if you don't respect the don't spam lists and requests to stop, or even go so far as to launch a DOS attack as TFA describes, then you definitely belong behind bars or without access to a computer.
I'd agree with the parent comments but for one issue. The company's clients were directly threatened. The spammers didn't just threaten Blue Security, they threatened Blue Security's customers. As the article stated, Blue Security's customers didn't sign up for a war. They signed up to not get spam. Getting bombarded by viral attacks wasn't part of the deal.
That said, I too am disappointed, but until effective means of finding and holding accountable the people behind the attacks this kind of extortion will continue.
Welcome to the wild-west. Where's Sherrif Bart and the Waco Kid when you need them?
----- Connection reset by beer
If you read up on Blue Security's actual implementation they never sent more unsubscribe requests than emails recieved. They sent one on behalf of the whole community first, then if that was ignored they sent one unsubscribe request for every email recieved from that spammer to a Blue Security customer.
It's exactly the same amount of traffic as everybody who recieved the email sending their own "Piss off and leave me alone" request.
On the subject of OS DoS, it won't work because the network will be too easily exploitable. However, something which used a supernode system to distribute the load would work quite well.
Personally I'm waiting for Google to step in, collect the pieces of Blue Security, then offer it as an automatic feature built into gMail. Spam gMail (x million accounts), someone checks that it really is spam, and then the spammer effectively gets a message saying "Stop spamming Google customers". Ignore it, and that's x million identical requests sent by one mother of a system.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Privateye is a tool that our network security admin here at Middlebury College, Mike Halsall, wrote to automatically quarentine computers into a VLAN (that stays with their mac address) that only has access to a help page, anti-virus tools, and windows update.
Due to the use of this and campus manager (I believe it's the software that actually manages the VLANs, could be wrong), viruses have gone from taking down the campus network several times a year, to being a non-issue. From the project page:
- Adam
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
I do both (well, I work for a guy who owns a business), but neither my home account nor my coworkers' inboxes get nontrivial amounts of spam. I've written instructions on how I did it, and if you follow them, you can probably get rid of your spam problem as well.
It's not easy if you're J. Random Enduser, but any qualified system administrator should be able to take the steps needed to win back control of his servers. You can choose to do this - with today's software - if you're willing to exert a modest amount of effort.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?