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Blue Security Gives up the Fight
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed May 17, 2006 09:12 AM
from the eggs-bacon-sausage-and-splat dept.
from the eggs-bacon-sausage-and-splat dept.
bblboy54 writes "According to The Washington Post, Blue Security has closed its doors, which can be confirmed by the Blue Security application failing to work today and their domain no longer resolving. Blue Security's CEO is quoted in the article: "It's clear to us that [quitting] would be the only thing to prevent a full-scale cyber-war that we just don't have the authority to start," Reshef said. "Our users never signed up for this kind of thing." You have to wonder where it goes from here. It seems an effective method has been found but more than a small private company could handle. Will someone else adapt this concept, or does the internet world give up?"
Related Stories
[+]
BlueSecurity Fall-Out Reveals Larger Problem 366 comments
mdrebelx writes "For anyone following the BlueSecurity story, sadly the anti-spam crusader has raised the white flag. Brian Krebs with the Washington Post is reporting that after BlueSecurity's announcement, Prolexic and UltraDNS, which were both linked with BlueSecurity through business relations came under a DNS amplification attack that brought down thousands of sites.
While much of the focus about the BlueSecurity story has been centered on the question of what can be done about spam, I think a bigger question has been raised - is the Internet really that fragile? What has been going on is essentially cyber-terrorism and from what has been reported so far the terrorist clearly have the upper hand."
[+]
BlackFrog to Take up BlueFrog's Flag 178 comments
Runefox writes "ZDNet UK has a story about a new SPAM defense mechanism called BlackFrog, a response to the demise of Blue Security's BlueFrog. According to the article, the new service is based on a P2P network of clients, called the 'Frognet', which allows the opt-out service to continue functioning even after a server has gone down, making a DDoS attack like that which crippled BlueFrog ineffective against the new service."
[+]
Technology: Blue Security Reborn As Social Action Enabler 29 comments
griswaldo writes "Wired News writes about the re-birth of the ill-fated Blue Security as a social action company. According to the article, founders of the former anti-spam company that made headlines after incurring the wrath of a Russian spam king have set up a company called Collactive that provides tools to organize grassroots action on political and social web sites. The article mentions a global warming initiative called WorldCoolers and, for the Slashdot YRO crowd, the Privacy Alert Network that kicked off by letting people comment on Homeland Security's latest crazy idea."
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The problem is it relies on a central server. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The problem is it relies on a central server. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Take a page from SETI (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I don't think any kind of attack spam with spam solution is worth it. We need to either redesign the protocol, marginalize the spammers, or make it very illegal and put them in jail. Sure, you might argue that direct marketing through email really isn't illegal (junk snail mail sure isn't), but I think if you don't respect the don't spam lists and requests to stop, or even go so far as to launch a DOS attack as TFA describes, then you definitely belong behind bars or without access to a computer.
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Re:Take a page from SETI (Score:5, Insightful)
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This works ... 100% effective in killing off spam (Score:4, Interesting)
Be pretty hard to get a murder conviction ... after all, there are literally MILLIONS of people with a motive ... I can picture it now ... the jury is deliberating, and says "the spammer got his skull crushed in ... sounds like he got off too lightly, dah?"
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Re:This works . 100% effective in killing off spam (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:This works . 100% effective in killing off spam (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Take a page from SETI (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, it's that annoying.
Maybe Sealand wants to start a Special Forces unit or something.
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Re:Take a page from SETI (Score:4, Insightful)
Do it right then. If you've got 15 names, murder 10. Then drop a Usenet post with a couple of scene shots saying "There's five names left on my list. If you want to know if yours is on it, just keep spamming." That would stop much more than 15 spammers. (Or at least they'd cower.)
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Re:Take a page from SETI (Score:4, Informative)
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P2P perhaps? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:The problem is it relies on a central server. (Score:5, Informative)
an attacker.
One of the nice attributes of having a central server is that BlueSecurity could validate
that the site was a legitimate target before unleashing the flurry of opt-out requests.
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Re:The problem is it relies on a central server. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:The problem is it relies on a central server. (Score:4, Interesting)
Coral cache (http://coralcdn.org/ [coralcdn.org]) with mod_expires to tweak the cache time and adjust length for high traffic times and mod_rewrite to drive everyone but Coral servers to the Coral cache. Not perfect but it could keep an otherwise dead site to appear alive for an extra day or so. Add in it's completely free, doesn't alter your pages and the only limits are a max single file size is ~35M and a daily bandwidth cap at 250G it's not a bad way to go.
The question is would this take enough heat off of Blue Security to keep going?
Parent
When the going gets tough... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When the going gets tough... (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, I too am disappointed, but until effective means of finding and holding accountable the people behind the attacks this kind of extortion will continue.
Welcome to the wild-west. Where's Sherrif Bart and the Waco Kid when you need them?
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Re:When the going gets tough... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:When the going gets tough... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:When the going gets tough... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because these "spam kings" (ok, let's find a new, more acceptable phrase, like "spam dorks") tend to hide out in countries that either have a) no formalized relations with the US or other countries or b) countries that might be allies but will not let us simply go tromping through their country on the hunt for spammers.
They hide in the shadows, collect money from the stupid and unwary, and then go after anyone who tries to stop them. If you think DDoS attacke are their only weapon, think again. It really is going to take a campaign of Internet espionage followed by vigilantism to get at most of these people. I can see it now... Merc for Hire -- specializing in SPAM and the removal of the source with extreme prejudice!
Parent
Re:When the going gets tough... (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, the amount of DOS the site gets should be comparable with the bandwidth needed to send the spams, so there are no abuses of the system. Just send their crap back to the sites they run.
That simply won't work because it will get exploited very easilly. I assume only links that have been submitted a large amount of times will get DDOSed. Someone will create a large amount of fake accounts on the P2P network, submit links to their target (or maybe spoof all the link submissions without needing to create fake accounts), and get a free DDOS network to attack whoever they want.
Parent
Re:When the going gets tough... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's exactly the same amount of traffic as everybody who recieved the email sending their own "Piss off and leave me alone" request.
On the subject of OS DoS, it won't work because the network will be too easily exploitable. However, something which used a supernode system to distribute the load would work quite well.
Personally I'm waiting for Google to step in, collect the pieces of Blue Security, then offer it as an automatic feature built into gMail. Spam gMail (x million accounts), someone checks that it really is spam, and then the spammer effectively gets a message saying "Stop spamming Google customers". Ignore it, and that's x million identical requests sent by one mother of a system.
Parent
Re:When the going gets tough... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
They should have listened (Score:5, Insightful)
"When the company's founders first approached the broader anti-spam community and asked them what they thought of the idea, everyone said this was a terrible idea and that they would eventually cause a lot of collateral damage," Underwood said. "But it's also extremely unfortunate, because it shows how much the spammers are winning this battle."
Hell, the idea of flooding the spammers network is older then a reasonably aged Armagnac and was discounted even when it came up.
Building a business model on such an innane idea looks as if the company execs are a few fries short of a happy meal. Speceifically since they where warned by more experienced people.
We are ALL "owned" (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet is no longer free (not as in beer). We must pay obesience to the owners by allowing their spam in out inboxes.
I, for one, do NOT welcome our spam-spewing overlords.
Re:We are ALL "owned" (Score:5, Insightful)
May whatever Deity exists prevent you from learning the difference first-hand.
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Re:We are ALL "owned" (Score:5, Funny)
Only if your INBOX is a vagina.
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Too bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a recent new Blue member. Spam to my work, gmail and home accounts has plummetted thanks to Blue Frog. And to whiners who moan about "vigilantism", blow me. Fight fire with fire.
Re:Too bad. (Score:5, Funny)
Water and foam both put out fire by lowering the temperature and depriving the combustible material of oxygen. This requires enough foam or water to completely saturate the area already burning, with a bit extra on the edges to prevent fresh fuel from igniting. That works well on a small scale (a single house), but very poorly on widespread forest or brush fires.
"Fighting fire with fire" means a controlled burn going inward toward the source of the fire. Done correctly, by the time the controlled burn meets the core of the fire, it has left in its wake a wide swath of already-consumed and partially-cooled fuel. Thus, the fire can't contine spreading outward along that same path. Completely surround the fire with such already-burned zones, and the fire can't do anything but burn itself out in-place.
Rather than needing to saturate the existing fire and its edges, this only requires defending a single line against spreading in the wrong direction - And preparation for that can start before igniting the controlled burn (such as by pre-saturating the area and/or clear-cutting a narrow strip bordering the target burn).
Extending the metaphor to to anti-spam techniques, think of the above description as DOS'ing the core of the fire. If we saturate the spammers' network connections, they have no more bandwidth to consume in spreading their crapfloods outward to the world. Continue until bandwidth costs "consume" the bank-accounts of the spammers (or more realistically, they cut their losses and run), and the spammer goes under (at least temporarily).
Now personally, I'd rather mix metaphors and literally fight spam with fire - Track these less-than-worthless bastards down and surround their offices or houses with a ring of fire moving in toward the core. Then roast marshmallows over their charred corpses as we sing "We Shall Overcome".
But, the law frowns on that, so I'll have to settle for simply helping to put them out of business.
Parent
authority? (Score:5, Funny)
Funny, not having the authority to do it didn't stop them before...
Dive Into Mark said it best... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to be an anti-spam advocate, if you want to write software or maintain a list or provide a service that identifies spam or blocks spam or targets spam in any way, you will be attacked. You will be attacked by professionals who have more money than you, more resources than you, better programmers than you, and no scruples at all. They want to make money, this is how they have decided to make money, they really can make a lot of money, and youre getting in their way.
[...]Someone challenged me, Well, how am I supposed to continue hosting these low-barrier discussions? I'm sorry, but I don't know. To quote Bruce Schneier, "I feel rather like the physicist who just explained relativity to a group of would-be interstellar travelers, only to be asked, 'How do you expect us to get to the stars, then?' I'm sorry, but I don't know that, either."
From Dive Into Mark [diveintomark.org] (which doesn't seem to be responding, so try Google's cache [72.14.209.104].)
Solving the Spam Bot problem (Score:5, Insightful)
This does not seem to me to be a difficult technical problem and it is in everyone's interest to get the compromised machines off the net.
Re:Solving the Spam Bot problem (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Solving the Spam Bot problem (Score:5, Informative)
ISPs are using the blocking of outgoing smtp traffic on port 25 for this very reason. But to really shut down this problem the ISP would also have to be able to provide technical support to remove the virus, or atleast something of that nature. Let alone the customer won't even think their computer is infected (how could it be, i don't download anything!!?) and the flurry of angry phone calls would ensue.
We had users at my campus that had blocked ports for a month before we were able to get in touch with them, they just thought their computer was broken. Or we get a phone call from an angry parent whose little suzy or billy can't send them email and update their facebook.
The idea is possible, but it is a nightmare in reality to have to support.
Parent
Re:Solving the Spam Bot problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Privateye is a tool that our network security admin here at Middlebury College, Mike Halsall, wrote to automatically quarentine computers into a VLAN (that stays with their mac address) that only has access to a help page, anti-virus tools, and windows update.
Due to the use of this and campus manager (I believe it's the software that actually manages the VLANs, could be wrong), viruses have gone from taking down the campus network several times a year, to being a non-issue. From the project page:
- Adam
Parent
Re:Solving the Spam Bot problem (Score:5, Informative)
Because its in nobody's financial interest. A zombie computer causes most of its harm to other networks, not the one its on.
Most of the ISPs are now large telcos and cable companies who hire support staff at would-you-like-fries-with-that wages. They don't have the capacity or the incentive to disinfect a zillion Windows boxes. It's much cheaper to buy a bigger pipe.
Of course, Microsoft owns the root problem. They sold a supposedly consumer-grade operating system that consumers can't maintain. Windows needs a dialog box that says, "You computer has been invaded by evil fuckwads. Would you like to kick them out?" where the two choices are "Yes" and "Ok".
Parent
Scary thought (Score:4, Interesting)
And of course, if you're in the business of breaking the law online (or rather just being generally anti-social) it's simply prudent to gather an army of computers, and then use that power to make others give into your demands. The actions of one hacker and his botnet caused an entire company to shut down operation - that's scary.
And scarier still is that the thousands of people whose computers were hammering away at the server, contributing to the victory of evil over good, are unaware of the part their machines played, and will doubtless play again.
This really is the computing equivalent of creating massive private armies with a mind-control drug - and while the email system really needs an overhaul, while the possibility to harness this kind of power exists there'll be the opportunity for extortion on this scale.
We're going about this the wrong way (Score:5, Insightful)
Filtering is one way, but basing it on the raw content of the email won't work. If there was a public key repository where legitimate users placed a public key for decryption, and all legitmate email were sent encrypted with the corresponding private key, the authenticity of the email could be known. Then, if someone starts making a nuisance of themselves, they could get their public key revoked. If this method were used, filters could be made to only let through emails that decrypted with the public key of the sender.
Let's face it, spam is a fact of life. Remember that you're up against people who do this as their 9-5er with no regard for law, ethics or their public image if you want to go the force-vs-force route.
Spammers are the wrong enemy (Score:4, Insightful)
And underground, it'd be also be helpful to DDoS the fuckers. The problem with that is that the dickhead 13 year old kids running the botnets don't care about spam.
LET'S CONTINUE THE FIGHT (pls read) (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, this clearly gives us one choice: Decentralizing Blue Frog.
The concept has been proven. Flooding the servers with opt-out requests.
So I propose this: Make a decentralized "black frog" which directly analyses the e-mails and begins doing what Blue Frog did. But this time, it's per-user.
If anyone wants to start the Black Frog project, give me a message (my gmail address is posted in my account).
The concept is this. Instead of asking the spammers to download the "do not intrude" list, hash your own mails using the following formula:
hash = substr(SHA1(e-mail),32). And in the post tell the spammer to remove this hash from their mailing list. (We can include random hashes to make it blurry).
If anyone wants to start the project, I'd be happy to organize it.
We need:
* At least one person with access to the Blue Frog sourcecode, or someone who has helped in programming the Blue Frog
* Lots of programmers
Writers class 101: Define before use (Score:4, Insightful)
What kind of thing? What kind of effective method has been found to do, what exactly? What is "this" concept we are talking about?
I read this site (almost) daily but have never ever heard of this company before. As it is apparently some kind of small startup, I'd imagine many others around here have never heard of them, either.
Without any context, this "article" is pure gibberish. Maybe it makes sense after reading the linked article (which, I'll admit in good
Re:Third Choice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Third Choice? (Score:4, Interesting)
If I got spam from someone, I sent them an e-mail asking them to stop. When I got another one from them, I sent two. Then three, four, and so on. I made liberal use of free e-mail so they couldn't filter out my addressed, and eventually spammed one guy with 98 e-mails before he relented.
Multiply that by 500,000 users and you'd get one nasty spam attack. That's what these guys deserve: to get one e-mail for every e-mail they've sent to each address. Tens of millions of e-mails flooding their inboxes.
Parent
Re:Third Choice? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Third Choice? (Score:5, Informative)
but anyone who's still getting spam in their inbox should install some nice filtering software.
That's not the point. If you run your own mail server or rely on filtering at your client end the spam uses up your bandwidth, your storage, your CPU resources to filter it, etc. Spammers like to use zombie machines around the net. Their operations cost them very little as they steal the capability from everyone else.
Parent
Re:Third Choice? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a catch-all email address set up on my domain - so $anything@$mydomain gets to me.
For years, I used to get a very small amount of spam to addresses like info@, sales@, etc, and a throwaway account I used on a website that I never used for any real mails.
Then, a few months ago, some scum-sucking shit-brained low-life motherfucker* decided to use my domain name in forged From: addresses.
(* But I'm not bitter)
I now receive on the order of a thousand spams, bounces and assorted related crap per day. Now, of these, only a tiny handful make it to my inbox, and they're all easy to spot. I've not done the stats, but I'd image that Thunderbird's filtering is 99% accurate or better.
It's still a pain in the arse though, and it's still utterly unacceptable behaviour on the part of the morons responsible.
I don't necessarily think that vigilantism is the answer, but something has to be done.
(Yes, I could switch off the catch-all addressing, but I actually find it useful, inconsiderate wankers trying to ruin the entire net for everyone not withstanding)
Parent
Re:Third Choice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? It obviously is. Nothing else is working. Once a few spammers have died horrible deaths, or have been mutilated, tortured, branded and hung out in the marketplace covered in honey with a big ant colony nearby, there just might be a reduction of spam.
Spamhaus knows the top 200 or so spammers, many with addresses. $1 from everyone who hates spam and there's a pretty good bounty, and it is cheaper than installing new filters all the time.
Parent
Sigh! Or why spam is unacceptable (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine, I'm happy for you. You obviously don't own an active domain, or a business. Because otherwise I could guarantee that it gets to be a problem for you.
But the problem is not you, it's not me, it's not my little kid sisters dog.
The problem is that a couple of hundred big time spammers are getting rich by shitting into the communal water supply!
If you think that's acceptable within a society then you will apologise that I have no respect for you and the likes of you.
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Re:Sigh! Or why spam is unacceptable (Score:5, Interesting)
I do both (well, I work for a guy who owns a business), but neither my home account nor my coworkers' inboxes get nontrivial amounts of spam. I've written instructions on how I did it [freesoftwaremagazine.com], and if you follow them, you can probably get rid of your spam problem as well.
It's not easy if you're J. Random Enduser, but any qualified system administrator should be able to take the steps needed to win back control of his servers. You can choose to do this - with today's software - if you're willing to exert a modest amount of effort.
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Re:Email is broken (Score:4, Insightful)
If you do that sort of thing enough, you will be tracked down and (if caught) prosecuted.
The same apparently cannot be said of spammers - or at least, not the ones that pick on individuals. I imagine that the story would be different if they chose to forge addresses from amazon, google, microsoft, etc.
Parent
Re:Email is broken (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting metaphor. Fact is that public waters tend to be full of shit, and there's nothing we can do about it. Reservoirs are routinely colonized by fish, waterfowl and aquatic arthropods, which eat the plants and each other and shit out the waste. Water supplies can only minimize this; they can't prevent it. So, rather than fighting a hopeless battle and delivering contaminated water, they accept the situation. They try to keep the reservoir somewhat clean, but they also filter and sterilize the water while delivering it.
It's likely that the same situation with email is permanent. Attacks can cut down somewhat on spammers, but like the insect larvae in the reservoirs, there will always be spammers in the internet. Delivering clean email will require filtering and decontamination software. We already have lots of it in place, and it's likely that we will always need it.
There will always be hucksters and scammers out there trying to separate us from our money.
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