"Make love, not spam"....

Mon Nov 29 23:10:33 UTC 2004

>>It's a DDOS. The risk of collateral damage is  high.
><snip>
>
>From what limited information is available in the articles, it 
>doesn't sound that way.  It's not really a DDoS attack, but more of 
>a "distributed web surfing bot."  
><snip>
>
>I understand this as more of a Distributed Consumption of Service 
>attack.  (Is the acronym DCoS used yet?)  Real requests, downloading 
>real data, to real computers.  A lot of them.  T
><snip>
>
>The big difference between Lycos Europe, and a script kiddie with 
>zombies is that Lycos is mature enough to use restraint and not 
>knock down websites with brute force.  They're attempting to use the 
>politically correct "grown up" way to attack someone:  economics.
>
>How is giving the spammers what they want (real web site traffic) an 
>attack?  That doesn't even qualify!

How many bogus URLs are embedded into spam content? A: Lots.
They are used to obscure words to get past filters, or as red herring 
targets or joe-jobs.  A DDoS is a DDoS, no matter how "benign" one 
might think it is, or how "evil/deserving" the target is perceived to 
be.

The risk of collateral damage is way too high.
-- 

Chuck Goolsbee                          V.P. Technical Operations
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