|
05.17.06
Blue Frog Killed By Spammers
 By
David A. Utter
The Israeli-based Blue Security firm had taken on spammers with its Blue Frog software, but the continued online attacks by those spammers has forced the company to shut down.
Blue Security CEO Eran Reshef said in an interview with Wired News that his anti-spam company would close its doors, as the attacks against his company impacted sites beyond Blue Security's.
The TypePad blogging service and thousands of other websites and mail servers hosted by Tucows felt the effects of massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks launched by the Russian spammer known as PharmaMaster. Those attacks began in early May and took down Blue Security's sites.
Then the attacks spread to TypePad after Blue Security rerouted traffic to an old blog it had on that service. Tucows CEO Elliot Noss said in the report the massive attack utilized so many attacking hosts that 70 percent of the IP addresses being used for the DDoS were unique.
Reshef explained why Blue Security would have to shut down in the article:
"Our community would very much like us to continue on the fight against spam, and our community has grown over the last week," Reshef said. "But at the end of the day if we continue doing so, within a few days, major websites will go down. I don't feel that this is something I can be responsible for. I cannot go ahead and rip up the internet to make Blue Security work. This is not the decision a commercial entity can make."
Reshef also said that governments needed to understand that spammers like PharmaMaster are connected to criminal syndicates, and cannot be shut down by a small company like his.
The attacks also heightened the awareness of what could happen if national enemies like terrorists, or competitive nations like China, chose to mount such an attack on a broad scale against US networks and websites.
Although the Internet traditionally has been able to route around obstacles due to its distributed nature, Blue Security's experience demonstrated how vulnerable the Internet is to interference.
About the Author:
David is a staff writer for EnterpriseSecurityNews
covering cyber security.
|
