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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?"
Anyone want to state the obvious answer?
Hey, wait a minute, I've followed Blue Security since I first read about them on /., and I can't believe they're just gonna fold up shop and give up! Isn't this what they got into the business for? Can't they take this attack and use it to demonstrate the validity of their concept? I wish they could think up another tactic besides, 'you win' -- perhaps diversifiying their URLs/IPs so that they're more spread out...less vuln to an attack on one IP? Come on, what do readers think...I know there's got to be some way to use BS software and reroute things through an Onion style network to fight back.
fak3r.com
"When the company's founders first approached the broader anti-spam community and asked them what they thought of the idea, everyone said this was a terrible idea and that they would eventually cause a lot of collateral damage," Underwood said. "But it's also extremely unfortunate, because it shows how much the spammers are winning this battle."
Hell, the idea of flooding the spammers network is older then a reasonably aged Armagnac and was discounted even when it came up.
Building a business model on such an innane idea looks as if the company execs are a few fries short of a happy meal. Speceifically since they where warned by more experienced people.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
This episode proves that the spammers own and control the internet.
The internet is no longer free (not as in beer). We must pay obesience to the owners by allowing their spam in out inboxes.
I, for one, do NOT welcome our spam-spewing overlords.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
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,
It's hard not to fall to vigilantism when there's no sherriff in town to keep the peace on your behalf...
Evidently your comments are modded so far down not even the spiders bother to read them.
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
Funny, not having the authority to do it didn't stop them before...
This guy's the limit!
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!
but anyone who's still getting spam in their inbox should install some nice filtering software.
That's not the point. If you run your own mail server or rely on filtering at your client end the spam uses up your bandwidth, your storage, your CPU resources to filter it, etc. Spammers like to use zombie machines around the net. Their operations cost them very little as they steal the capability from everyone else.
Trolling is a art,
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.
Fine, I'm happy for you. You obviously don't own an active domain, or a business. Because otherwise I could guarantee that it gets to be a problem for you.
But the problem is not you, it's not me, it's not my little kid sisters dog.
The problem is that a couple of hundred big time spammers are getting rich by shitting into the communal water supply!
If you think that's acceptable within a society then you will apologise that I have no respect for you and the likes of you.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
It seems that the problem here is that they were brought down by the spammer's huge number of bots running on compromised machines. Why has no one tackled this problem? It seems to me that this should be the responsibility of the ISP's. I'm no expert but I believe that if someone reports to an ISP that a particlular IP address is running a bot, that it should be a simple process for the ISP to do some tests to see if that is true by checking the nature of the traffic coming out of the machine. If they decide that the machine has been compromised, they should shut down it's connection and redirect port 80 requests to a web page explaining to the owner that their machine has be compromised and how to fix it.
This does not seem to me to be a difficult technical problem and it is in everyone's interest to get the compromised machines off the net.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I know the flip side of the spam problem is bandwidth wastage, but anyone who's still getting spam in their inbox should install some nice filtering software.
I have a catch-all email address set up on my domain - so $anything@$mydomain gets to me.
For years, I used to get a very small amount of spam to addresses like info@, sales@, etc, and a throwaway account I used on a website that I never used for any real mails.
Then, a few months ago, some scum-sucking shit-brained low-life motherfucker* decided to use my domain name in forged From: addresses.
(* But I'm not bitter)
I now receive on the order of a thousand spams, bounces and assorted related crap per day. Now, of these, only a tiny handful make it to my inbox, and they're all easy to spot. I've not done the stats, but I'd image that Thunderbird's filtering is 99% accurate or better.
It's still a pain in the arse though, and it's still utterly unacceptable behaviour on the part of the morons responsible.
I don't necessarily think that vigilantism is the answer, but something has to be done.
(Yes, I could switch off the catch-all addressing, but I actually find it useful, inconsiderate wankers trying to ruin the entire net for everyone not withstanding)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The bad guys won this time because we tried to match force with force. I've said it multiple times in this forum - we have to accept that spam isn't going to go away. The only way we're going to get it down to an acceptable level is to make it not worth doing.
Filtering is one way, but basing it on the raw content of the email won't work. If there was a public key repository where legitimate users placed a public key for decryption, and all legitmate email were sent encrypted with the corresponding private key, the authenticity of the email could be known. Then, if someone starts making a nuisance of themselves, they could get their public key revoked. If this method were used, filters could be made to only let through emails that decrypted with the public key of the sender.
Let's face it, spam is a fact of life. Remember that you're up against people who do this as their 9-5er with no regard for law, ethics or their public image if you want to go the force-vs-force route.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
I don't necessarily think that vigilantism is the answer,
Why not? It obviously is. Nothing else is working. Once a few spammers have died horrible deaths, or have been mutilated, tortured, branded and hung out in the marketplace covered in honey with a big ant colony nearby, there just might be a reduction of spam.
Spamhaus knows the top 200 or so spammers, many with addresses. $1 from everyone who hates spam and there's a pretty good bounty, and it is cheaper than installing new filters all the time.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
A new protocol will help greatly, but it won't stop the REAL problem which is people shitting in communal waters.
Interesting metaphor. Fact is that public waters tend to be full of shit, and there's nothing we can do about it. Reservoirs are routinely colonized by fish, waterfowl and aquatic arthropods, which eat the plants and each other and shit out the waste. Water supplies can only minimize this; they can't prevent it. So, rather than fighting a hopeless battle and delivering contaminated water, they accept the situation. They try to keep the reservoir somewhat clean, but they also filter and sterilize the water while delivering it.
It's likely that the same situation with email is permanent. Attacks can cut down somewhat on spammers, but like the insect larvae in the reservoirs, there will always be spammers in the internet. Delivering clean email will require filtering and decontamination software. We already have lots of it in place, and it's likely that we will always need it.
There will always be hucksters and scammers out there trying to separate us from our money.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.