On 9/29/2010 4:05 PM, Geo. wrote:
it's not an attack, it's a response to the spam offer.
Of course it's an "attack" because by it's very definition it's designed
to disrupt. It's an attempted DDOS.
It doesn't abuse the
network or the computers, it abuses the spammers sales system and manpower.
"Sales systems" are usually computers, and for them to be abuseable,
they have to be on networks.
There are bots that send out 20-60 _billion_ spams per day. Even if a
few percent of recipients "responded" that could easily cause network
meltdown "surrounding" the "sales system[s]". The "sales system" may be
hosted in such a fashion that the "surrounding network" is entirely
innocent.
For example, those very same bots use compromised machines (running a
trojaned instance of nginx or similar) or public (effectively)
redirectors as the only visible face of their ordering systems. So, you
have a few bazillion people (and automated systems) trying to do fake
orders thru some poor guys compromised windoze (or linux!) box blowing
out an ISP network segment, or, indeed, thru Yahoo or Gmail servers (eg:
googlegroups url spammers).
Then, what about joe jobs?
Not to mention that concerted efforts to disrupt telecommunications for
knowingly fake orders will probably be illegal on a number of fronts,
including fraud and computer intrusion laws.
And finally, guess what? Just going to their ordering sites is
dangerous. There are several major spambots (eg: cutwail/Zeus)
spamvertising "ordering sites" that _also_ try to forcibly download yet
more malware.
So while you're feeling smug submitting a fake order, your computer has
just been pwned, and then _you_ become the target for the next round of
fake orders.
Do you get the impression that this is a very bad idea yet?
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