Russian spammer seems to be winning
RADA
Apple Valley, CA Member
Blue Frog still down
Russian spammer seems to be winning
the Inquirer
By Nick Farrell: Friday 05 May 2006, 07:04 (link to article)
A RUSSIAN spammer who has declared war on the anti-spam outfit Blue Frog appears to be winning.
The outfit has been off-line since as its servers have been subjected to a prolonged denial of service attack. Yesterday we reported how Blue Frog had shifted some of the attack to blog site Six Apart and caused its servers to crash too.
Now we are told that Blue Frog's main address in DNS now points to localhost (127.0.0.1) so never resolves. However some of the other addresses on the Blue Frog Site are now up and running and some services have been resumed.
However, it has been a messy week for Blue Frog which started with the Russian spammer emailing some of its customers threatening to reveal their addresses to the world. This proved to be an empty threat, but then Blue Frog was subjected to a massive DoS attack on the group which has lasted for days. µ
I hope they can overcome this DoS Attack. I'd sign up for their service (and pay for it) just to piss off Ivan the Spammer...
Link to Blue Security
Russian spammer seems to be winning
the Inquirer
By Nick Farrell: Friday 05 May 2006, 07:04 (link to article)
A RUSSIAN spammer who has declared war on the anti-spam outfit Blue Frog appears to be winning.
The outfit has been off-line since as its servers have been subjected to a prolonged denial of service attack. Yesterday we reported how Blue Frog had shifted some of the attack to blog site Six Apart and caused its servers to crash too.
Now we are told that Blue Frog's main address in DNS now points to localhost (127.0.0.1) so never resolves. However some of the other addresses on the Blue Frog Site are now up and running and some services have been resumed.
However, it has been a messy week for Blue Frog which started with the Russian spammer emailing some of its customers threatening to reveal their addresses to the world. This proved to be an empty threat, but then Blue Frog was subjected to a massive DoS attack on the group which has lasted for days. µ
I hope they can overcome this DoS Attack. I'd sign up for their service (and pay for it) just to piss off Ivan the Spammer...
Link to Blue Security
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Comments
May 04, 2006 03:40 PM US Eastern Timezone
Internet under Attack by Renegade Spammer; Blue Security Responds; Blue Security Identifies ``PharmaMaster'' as the Illegal Spammer Who is Threatening the Internet to Keep His Spam Business Running
MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 4, 2006--Blue Security, Inc., developers of the Do Not Intrude Registry(TM) solution to eliminate unsolicited e-mail spam, responded today to the latest attempts from a renegade spammer who is trying to stop Internet users from opting out of receiving his spam. "PharmaMaster", one of the world's leading spammers, is the culprit who is holding the entire Internet hostage to stop the Blue Community and keep his spam business running.
Eran Reshef, CEO of Blue Security, said, "Six out of the top 10 spammers worldwide have stopped sending spam to the Blue community recently; as such, PharmaMaster is determined to prevent this change in the spam economy. After a barrage of threatening letters this week that only made the Blue community stronger, PharmaMaster resorted to sophisticated attacks on Blue Security."
Reshef continued, "The attacks started with a strike on the Internet backbone itself, causing the Blue Web site to become inaccessible to visitors outside Israel, while remaining available for Israeli visitors. How exactly this attack was carried out is still unresolved, but what is clear is that PharmaMaster boasted that it was he who was able to make a top-tier ISP's staff member to block Blue Security's former IP address (194.90.8.20) at the backbone routers."
In PharmaMaster's words (taken from ICQ sessions where PharmaMaster contacted Blue Security): 'Support (top-tier ISP's name withheld) says: Yes wont be a problem, I'll make sure to block all traffic to this domain very soon just get me reports, mate.'
Reshef continued, "Thirty minutes after Blue closed its Israeli site and posted a note on its blog site, PharmaMaster ruthlessly ordered a massive, sophisticated DDoS attack against any site associated with Blue. This attack caused five top-tier hosting providers in the U.S. and Canada, a major DNS provider and a popular blog site to go down for several hours."
PharmaMaster summarized the situation (excerpt from ICQ session): "you know Ii feel sorry for you and all the world 9000 servers (which) are down :-)"
According to Reshef, PharmaMaster also told Blue Security that if he can't send spam, there will be no Internet. He also said that he will do whatever it takes to continue his fight but acknowledged the power of the Blue Community.
PharmaMaster (excerpt from ICQ session): "Blue found the right solution to stop spam, and I can't let this continue."
Blue Security is working hard to restore its community-based anti-spam service to its members, and has already started contacting the relevant authorities. Blue Security is working closely with its service providers and partners to help resolve the problems and mitigate risk.
Blue Security is calling upon its members and supporters worldwide to help the community to win the fight against the criminals who wish to control the Internet. Community members and Internet users can assist by making the information published by Blue Security available on their Web sites and help more people know about the community's effort to reclaim the Internet from the hands of cyber criminals.
About Blue Security, Inc.
Blue Security was established in 2004 by seasoned entrepreneurs Eran Reshef and Amir Hirsh to provide a viable solution for eliminating spam and spyware. The company's grassroots approach, the Do Not Intrude Registry, empowers members to securely and automatically request that spammers remove them from their lists. The opt-out action encourages spammers to conduct business elsewhere while defending the rights of registered members.
That'll do it. Should only take Jack 24 HRS.
nope. It'll take about 15 minutes for him to get in, kill them all, but discover that Nina Meyers was actually orchestrating the whole thing, and has set up bombs at key internet backbone locations set to go off in the next day, if blue security doesn't stop what it's doing. Then it will take him 23:45 hours to solve the problem.
Problem solved.
I say we find this commie, and then...hmm...just send in the seals. this guy is probably living in a mansion.
Today I got this email (addressed to someone named spike## @ (my own domain).
It was sent from this address: Blue Security [a12le14@adolvsson.com]
Here are the contents:
I installed Blue Frog a month or two ago, didn't really pursue it too much, then uninstalled it shortly thereafter. Perhaps coincidentally, I have also received more spam in the past week than I would typically get in a month.
This is going to be interesting.
Now I'm careful and don't just throw around my addresses. Always uncheck the subscribe button and always use the red X to close popups so I was never getting a huge amount of spam.
Blue Frog is basically is an automatic Opt-out. You forward all your spam to them. They track it back to it's source. They notify source to remove you from their spamming list. If in 10 days they haven't done it then Blue Frog sends an automated request to the Spammers ISP, the Spammer, and the Web site doing the advertising. They do it on a 1 for 1 basis. 1 SPAM=1 request. So when you send out 3 million spam you could get 3 million requests back if they all went to members. This upsets the spammers customers because now they are having to wade through the opt out requests and also being shut down for spamming. Not good for the spammers business. 6 of the 10 biggest spammers have complied and purged Blue Frog members from their lists, but a couple of them have poor logic and started a spamming war. So far it is working against them because membership has gone from 471.2K up to 521.7K since the 1st.
You can get a running account of the attacks here : http://community.bluesecurity.com/forums/
and here : http://castlecops.com/f230-Blue_Security.html
Did I mention that the Opt-out requests happen in waves and from a lot of "Frogs" at once ? Never enough to shut a site down, but enough to be noticed.
Just a case of the spammers can't take their own medicine. They do it to us and this is ok, because it's their job. We try to exert our "rights" and they claim it's a DDOS attack. PLEASE !!!!!
I love to hear them squirm and cry. Finally they are getting their due.
This was posted on the Blue Security site this morning :
Blue Security Ceases Anti-Spam Operations
When we founded Blue Security in 2004, we believed that if we automated a way for users to rise up and exercise their rights under the CAN-SPAM Act, we could reduce the amount of spam on the Internet.
Over the past few months we were able to leverage the power of the Blue Community and convince top spammers responsible for sending over 25% of the world's spam to comply with our users' opt-out list. We were making real progress in eliminating spam from the lives of our users.
However, several leading spammers viewed this change as a strategic threat to their spam business. The week before last, these spammers launched a series of attacks against us, taking down hundreds of thousands of other websites via a massive Denial-of-Service attack and causing damage to ISPs, website owners and Internet users worldwide. They also began a relentless campaign of email intimidation against many members of the Blue Community.
After recovering from the attack, we determined that once we reactivated the Blue Community, spammers would resume their attacks. We cannot take the responsibility for an ever-escalating cyber war through our continued operations.
As we cannot build the Blue Security business on the foundation we originally envisioned, we are discontinuing all of our anti-spam activities on your behalf and are exploring other, non spam-related avenues for our technological developments. As much as it saddens us, we believe this is the responsible thing to do.
You need not do anything as a result of this change. We will continue to protect your names and addresses and honor all privacy commitments we made to you.
We have concluded we should not take Blue Security to the full deployment stage we originally planned to achieve, but we are proud of what we have accomplished thus far as a young startup company.
We are extremely proud to have had the chance to work with such a devoted and dedicated community: thank you for the vote of confidence you gave us over the past few months as well as the particularly vocal support you have shown over the last two weeks.
We will be innovating and building our technology in new, other directions and will continue to give back to you, our Community.
Thank you for your support,
The Blue Security Team.
I guess this really makes a statement to how weak the infrastructure of the internet really is when a few cyber criminals can make threats, carry them out, take down a major portion of the network, destroy 2 companies, and they did it all while safe from any kind of law enforcement. Maybe net neutrality is a bad thing. At least then someone will have an economic incentive for keeping this kind of stuff under control.
A sad day indeed !
ok, done ranting.
I'd tell you what I think of all this, but the S-M swear filter would probably die of apoplexy...
/me thinks of all the folding farms that could be implemented in a DDOS
How it can be taken to the next level.............?
This is utter crap. I am sick of SPAM, I NEVER OPEN THEM!!!! Yet I still get them, starts off as one or two here and there, the next thing I know it's exponential and I get 100 a day and I never gave my email out to any company that shares my information with anyone so I know it was hacked from one of those databases and stolen, shared, and now I am completely screwed to where I just have to delete 99% of all my email becuase it is SPAM.
Spam slows down the internet, I wonder how much of the internets total bandwidth is waisted, nay, STOLEN by these ****tards. How does it even work? I mean I am sure no one here opens spam email, my family who are computer illiterate don't open them, who opens them? Do they get money for sending out email that no one opens or are their that many stupid *******s in this world actually checking te spam out?
It's like a hoax that makes these people money somehow... makes no sense IMHO. I mean of a billion emails sent, if you make a fraction of a penny per hit the amount of people needed to oepn this stuff would be insane compaired to how many are actually opening them.
I guess there are people(not so smart) that open them.
[RWB] I like your way for thinking. When i was reading the last article saying they were stopping their business[Blue Security]...that is the same thing I was thinking...burning this ******* computers down and him with them. I know that would be the idea thing to do.
I wish I could do something. I am too computer iliterate *sigh*.
Someone IS reading and opening and responding and BUYING.
BUT WHY *^*% with the rest of us?
I really hate spams
Look at the junk snail-mail you get. Even with a reduced rate for bulk mail, let's say it costs the sender 15 cents apiece for printing and postage. (A low estimate.)
Junk Snail-Mail: $.15 X 1,000,000 victims = $150,000
Spam: $500 for a cheap computer + $30 per month Internet connection = $530
$530 divided by 1,000,000 victims = .05 cents apiece, or twenty victims for one penny.
Take into account the fact that the $500 computer can be reused for years and the total cost approaches zero.
People who are in business do what they do because they are convinced that there is a market for their product. If a spammer offers them advertising services at a ridiculously low rate they will probably look no further than the cost/benefit ratio and sign up. They make a few sales to suckers and the spammers keep rolling in the dough.
It's a business. It's an annoying sleazy business, but it's still a business. If it didn't pay off they wouldn't waste their time doing it.
I think I'll change my name to SPAMMAN.
Now all I need to do is right a really cool app better than Electron Microscope and zombie all the folding machines
Should be a good start on a power base.
Call me RICH SPAMMAN