csua.org/u/fvo -> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/16/AR2006051601873.html
Manage Your Newsletters spacer In the Fight Against Spam E-Mail, Goliath Wins Again By Brian Krebs Special to The Washington Post Wednesday, May 17, 2006; Page A01 Eran Reshef had an idea in the battle against spam e-mail that seemed to be working: he fought spam with spam. But because those sort of requests tend to be ignored, Blue Security took them to a new level: it bombarded the spammers with requests from all 522,000 of its customers at the same time.
That led to a flood of Internet traffic so heavy that it disrupted the spammers' ability to send e-mails to other victims -- a crippling effect that caused a handful of known spammers to comply with the requests. Then, earlier this month, a Russia-based spammer counterattacked, Reshef said. The spammer also sent another message: Cease operations or Blue Security customers will soon find themselves targeted with virus-filled attacks. Today, Reshef will wave a virtual white flag and surrender. The company will shut down this morning and its Web site will display a message informing its customers about the closure.
would be the only thing to prevent a full-scale cyber-war that we just don't have the authority to start," Reshef said. Security experts say the move marks a disheartening development in the ongoing battle by computer users, online businesses and law enforcement against those who clutter e-mail inboxes with a continuous glut of ads for drugs, porn and get-rich-quick schemes.
Alan Paller, director of research for the Bethesda-based SANS Institute, a computer security training group, said extortion attacks have exploded in the past few years. With Blue Security, Paller said, the attackers' extortionist demands were that the company merely stop interfering in a multimillion-dollar spam operation. "We're hearing from federal law enforcement that they are getting more than one new case of online extortion each day," Paller said. Tucows chief executive Elliot Noss called the attack "by far the largest the company had ever seen," and said that only a handful of companies have the infrastructure in place to withstand such an assault, much less a more powerful one. "This attack really was like trying to take out a mosquito with an atomic bomb," Noss said. The FBI is investigating the attacks, according to Six Apart, but agency officials would not confirm a federal investigation yesterday. The innovative approach in the fight against spam caught the attention of investors in 2004, when Blue Security received more than $4 million in venture capital, but critics questioned whether the company could win such a massive battle. "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."
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