Feelin’ Blue: Spam Attack Prompts Blue Security to Quit
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Written By Reprise Media | May 17, 2006 | Share This
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Score one for the forces of botheration: controversial spam fighter Blue Security has elected to throw in the towel, says Wired. An escalating conflict between the aggressive anti-spam company and several spammers threatened to take down major sites and service providers across the ‘net, an outcome deemed unsavory by Blue Security.
The company initially seemed to be making a dent in the spam business. The Israeli firm’s Blue Frog browser extension enabled users to report spammers, which were encouraged by Blue Security to lay off its customers. If diplomacy failed, users could send ‘opt-out’ requests to spammers via Blue Frog upon receiving unwanted mail; massive numbers of ‘opt-outs’ issued simultaneously (Blue Securtiy counted half a million folks on its Do Not Spam list) acted very much like denial-of-service attacks directed at spammers’ servers.
The tactic was effective - to a point. While some spammers complied with Blue Security’s requests, others angrily shot back two weeks ago after figuring out a hefty number of email addresses on Blue Security’s rolls. Those addies were flooded with spam, after which Blue Security was crippled by a coordinated DOS attack that collaterally disabled “hundreds of thousands” of additional sites, including those on the Six Apart blog network.
CEO Eran Reshef said that electing to continue a fight that could “rip up the internet” was “not the decision a commercial entity can make;” instead, he implored ISPs and governments to take up the fight, as they would have the resources necessary to stave off attacks like the one weathered by Blue Security. The incident certainly illustrates that the firepower available to a start-up won’t be enough to do the job. And Techdirt makes one point about the episode worryingly clear: “It certainly will embolden spam attackers to hit hard at anyone who takes them on.”
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