TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Lycos Pulls Anti-Spam 'Vigilante' Campaign

Re: Lycos Pulls Anti-Spam 'Vigilante' Campaign

Steve Sobol (sjsobol@JustThe.net)
Wed, 08 Dec 2004 12:55:00 -0800

Rick Merrill wrote:

>> "I find the anti-spam downloadable DDoS tool to be without a doubt
>> irresponsible, possibly illegal,

> Illegal? Right, and enforced by the international "internet police"?

It's a violation of several countries' laws.

>> the wrong impression to users, and possibly the dumbest thing I have
>> heard of this week," said Adrien de Beaupre, an incident handler with
>> the SANS Internet Storm Center (ISC).

> As if that frenchie has a better idea?!

SANS is an internationally known and respected computer security
organization. Your idiotic implication that the person who was quoted
is clueless because he's French makes you look ignorant.

>> Dan Goldberg, a senior security analyst with MADJiC Consulting Inc.,
>> described the Lycos Europe move as "vigilantism" and said the use of
>> questionable tactics to deal with a security risk created more
>> problems that it solved.

> Looks like Lycos just got ethics!

I've seen this discussed in many forums where it has been said that
this whole bit of idiocy on the part of Lycos was just a publicity
stunt, and *as a publicity stunt*, it worked pretty well. It was a
stupid, criminal publicity stunt, but people paid attention to the
company.

Of course, aside from the collateral damage they caused, aside from
the fact that they caused sites to go down when they insisted that
their little ploy wouldn't DDoS anything, now the spammers have
responded by releasing a piece of software that looks like Lycos's
screen saver but is a trojan designed to launch a DDoS on Lycos. Quite
predictable.

JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.

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