Antispammers Get Slammed
Network Computing is reporting a Hatfields & McCoys of the 21st Century...
They're the Hatfields and McCoys of the 21st Century--spammers and the organizations that fight them. But now the Internet crooks are getting downright nasty and targeting their opponents directly.
The SANs Institute has discovered that a sizable distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack has affected several well-known antispam groups. Spamhaus, SURBL and several others seem to be the victims of an attack similar to the one that incapacitated--and eventually shut down--antispam software maker Blue Security last year. While some of the groups are back up, others are still trying to recover.
If there's a silver lining in all this, however, it is that the SANS folks believe antispam groups must be doing something right--otherwise the bad guys wouldn't be joining forces to strike back on such a level.