Spam War Takes Out Blog Services

munchola writes "Following on from the story about spammers attacking Blue Security's anti-spam system, CBR is reporting that Six Apart, which runs the popular LiveJournal and TypePad blogging services, has become a collateral victim. Six Apart told its millions of bloggers it had experienced 'intermittent and limited availability for TypePad, LiveJournal, TypeKey, sixapart.com, movabletype.org and movabletype.com', before resolving the issue in the early hours of Wednesday. '[The spammers are] trying to rip apart the internet just to make our community stop fighting back against spam,' Blue Security's chief executive Eran Reshef said, adding that he knows who's behind the attack."

Guilty of what?

Some spammer was DDoSing personal logs on the internet?

What are they going to charge him with? Logjammin'? [logjammin.org]

I guess that isn't so funny if you've never seen The Big Lebowski [wikipedia.org].

Re:Guilty of what?

Don't be fucking pedantic. It's an analogy, buy a clue.

Redirecting a URL is not vandalism.
--
Fast, Reliable webhosting for online communities [communityhosting.net]

Is it okay for Blue to redirect the next DDOS to communityhosting.net? I hear it is fast and reliable.

Is Blue Security going public with who's behind it

Is Blue Security going public with who's behind it?
He should, so we can put on the pressure.

Re:Is Blue Security going public with who's behind

Agreed! I've got my pitchfork and torch right here... I dunno about you but I'm up for some mob rule and a lynching to take care of this mess.

Fighting abuse with abuse is bad

Fighting abuse with abuse is bad.

Swamping a spammer is not a good idea, because he can either redirect the attacks to an innocent third party, or simply pointless because they use stolen ressources, like trojaned computers that host illegal sites.

The best way to eradicate spammers would simply be to go after their clients.

Re:Fighting abuse with abuse is bad

The best way to eradicate spammers would simply be to go after their clients.

That hasn't worked yet. If you have some idea how that could be accomplished and effective against spam and spammers, please feel free to elaborate.

Blue security seems to be causing pain to spammers, enough to get a rise out of them at least. Aren't they actually reflecting the spam back to the source? I think that was their tactic.

If they are effective, that's a net positive in the spam fight.

Re:Fighting abuse with abuse is bad

Even if that's not the case here, it's certainly possible for someone malicious to subvert Blue Security's agent in such a manner.

It seems blue security has been compromised by the spammers.
I can't see why blue security should be blamed- except for their security problem.
The problem is spam and spammers, and it is ludicrous to think otherwise.

I have been working on the spam problem for >10 years.

The problem is lax ISPs and network operators who don't pay attention to their mail. Who don't jump on the trojaned machines on their network that are causing >90% of the spam problem in the world.

I have had the same trojaned machine sending me the same spam every 15 minutes, from a school district. It took me days to finally get a shitty response out of the network operators there to get that machine shut down until it could be cleaned. They didn't seem concerned at all, it was like I was "bothering them" to ask them to stop that machine from spamming.
I bet it was sending 150,000 messages between the ones I received. Obviously a major problem. They couldn't care less.
Now THEY should have been DOS'd.

Ya know, several years ago I asked one of the principles of Akamai to get involved, to provide some of the bandwidth and hosting in a fault tolerant fashion, which they reportedly are in a unique position to provide on their monitored distributed network. Practically cannot be effectivedly DOS'd. They thought my proposal "interesting" but didn't want to get involved for the good of the internet, because they didn't want to attract attention from the bad guys.
It wasn't 5 or 6 months before they were DOS'd and extorted.

EVERYONE is involved now. We are all being extorted by the spammers. If you cross them they will attack you, even if you just ask them to please stop spamming you.

The only possible answer is responsibility. Networks being responsible for what goes on over their network. Shut down spammers. Don't rent them servers. Don't sell them bandwidth. Jump on problems, even on weekends and holidays, and you have to do it FAST.

Nothing is going to stop spam completely, we can only increase the cost to spammers, and increase the costs for networks to sell to spammers. Make it uneconomical to have spammers as customers.

When the cheapest T-1 a spammer can find is $250,000 a month, spam will stop.

Re:Fighting abuse with abuse is bad

isn't that counter to what you have in your signature?

Opting out is *NOT* abuse!

All blue frog does is requesting to be opted out. One form send per spam received. No more, no less.

4 of the 10 major spammers had already excluded the blue security list from their mass mailings, and their problem was solved. But this particular spammer, instead of complying, shut down Blue Security.

Just because Blue Frog causes A SIDE EFFECT of disminishing the bandwidth of the spammer's website, is not Blue Security's fault. (It is our LEGAL RIGHT to request for opt-out, and to keep requesting it UNTIL IT IS FULFILLED).

To say opting out is abuse, is nothing but legitimizing illegal (non CAN-SPAM complying) spam.

Re:Fighting abuse with abuse is bad

Guys, I'm growing tired of the high moral argument that "it's not right to fight abuse with abuse" or "eye for an eye still leaves you blind".

War and drama asside: I keep waiting for someone to make this point but I'm not seeing it yet.

Spam is a solicitation to contact the advertised party in the hopes that you will give them money. Otherwise known as an advertisement. THEY CONTACT US. It's called the free market. In turn we all have the right to use the communication path they supply to request that they leave us alone.

Is it illegal to contact some company you see on a billboard or in a TV commercial? What absurdity! What is this world coming to where everyone gets sucked into DDoS drama at every chance? Blue Froggers are just doing business within the realm of the law. No stretching the rules. No sensationalism.

The only reason spammer servers crash is because they aren't prepared and are poorly designed. They have two options:
1. Seriously upgrade their infrastructure to handle whatever degree of responses their advertisements generate & hire more staff to process the hits their ad generates.
=or=
2. Seriously decrease their advertisements to be in line with their capacity to manage their generated trafic.

It's just economics and common sense. This DDoS talk is a waste of time - the Blue Frog client is much nicer to the spammers than they are to us. And this huge amount of anger directed at Blue Frog is proof that it bites into their freedom to be irresponsible.

They can keep their pill pushing sites - I don't care if there are suckers out there dumb enough to give them money. I just want them to stop bothering ME. They will never get one red hot cent from me. They WILL get endless trouble from me as long as they continue to disrespect my privacy.

All the best folks!
B.

Blame fest

fta:
The spammer also launched a conventional bandwidth-consumption DDoS attack against bluesecurity.com. It was around this time that the company opened its new blog, which meant TypePad got whacked.

This blue security article has been running for a few days now and the site hasn't been responding any time I've tried recently.

Isn't it just another DDOS blame fest when in reality its just the news spreading around the world and all the collective users of all the collective news sites are clicking the links to try to read the story?

A total slashdotting/digging/farking and general newsing all at once.

It was the same when word spread about google going down.
"OMG have you heard, google is dead?"
*CLICK* "Yer, its not working here either" *CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK*
*CLICK* "Hey, its loaded here." *CLICK* "Oh crap, its broken again now.."

We are all guilty of assisting this DDOS attack. shame on us.

It will ease up once something else comes and takes our attention away from it.

Re:Blame fest

" Isn't it just another DDOS blame fest when in reality its just the news spreading around the world and all the collective users of all the collective news sites are clicking the links to try to read the story?"

No. Here's what happened:

1. The spammer DDOSed bluesecurity.com. Quite well, in fact.
2. After a few days, Blue Security managed to get a redirect going to a blog they put up on blogs.com, which is run by TypePad.
3. The spammer then DDOSed TypePad.

Believe me, TypePad gets Farked/Dugg/Slashdotted every day. They can handle the normal traffic spikes. This was deliberate, and it was well documented.

"We are all guilty of assisting this DDOS attack. shame on us."

A drop in the ocean. TypePad can absorb these sorts of things. Make no mistake: TypePad was taken down by a deliberate, coordinated DDOS attack.

Pistols at dawn.

"'[The spammers are] trying to rip apart the internet just to make our community stop fighting back against spam,' Blue Security's chief executive Eran Reshef said, adding that he knows who's behind the attack.""

Too bad dueling is dead.

Let the bloggers blog! Set my people free!

Quote from Anil Dash, VP of Six Apart [dashes.com]

Kill the spammers

I don't think spam will stop, or even slow down, until a spammer is seriously hurt or killed. Right now, they know there is no consequence to their actions. I'm not saying I personally advocate killing spammers, but it certainly wouldn't make me feel bad to hear about it being done. Spamming would be a lot riskier if there were an element of harm attached for the spammer.

Different take...

Techdirt [techdirt.com] has a different story on what caused the outages. The info they have came from here [digg.com].

Spammers are taking over...its sad really.

I once went onto a support wiki for a company's website, all the articles had been cleared and multiple new ones had been added, something to the effect of: Free sample! Prescription drugs... Its sad, they took over a support wiki and filled it with spam.

Two birds with one stone?

Taking out spammers and bloggers?

I can't see any down side to this, honestly.

Self-hosting

Ah, it's so nice to be self-hosted [intelligentblogger.com]. Back when I was on Blogger.com, myself and many other users who received links from Slashdot stories or news sites became the target of a spammer who's sole purpose was to screw up the service for everyone. He had a script that would bomb a blog with hundreds of racist messages, overloading the system in the process. (Sorry, blogger.com's software isn't that good.) I was forced to disable the comments, delete the entry, and recreate it. Thankfully, there were only a few anonymous comments on the current entry which were easy to recreate.

While Blogger eventually added a captcha to solve the problem (after being non-responsive to support requests), it left a bad taste in my mouth. It was at that point that I decided to go self-hosted. I've never looked back. For the cost of a cheap hosting provider, you can setup a Wordpress installation that looks better, is more feature-rich, and automatically queues suspcious messages rather than allowing them to pass through. So while my site could be DDOSed if it was specifically targetted, it can't be overloaded with spam or used to take down other bloggers.

Shifting attack

"He's trying to rip apart the internet just to make our community stop fighting back against spam," Blue Security's chief executive Eran Reshef said of the spammer he believes launched the attack.

LiveJournal and TypePad found themselves suffering the brunt of the attack when Blue, which says it has been targeted by a "top four" Russian spammer, redirected the front page of its website to a blog hosted at TypePad's data center.

Reshef said Blue replaced the front page of its site with the TypePad blog to keep its users up to date with events, and disagreed with commentary that said Blue acted irresponsibly by passing the DDoS burden to Six Apart.

"We didn't offload any DDoS," he said. "That's like blaming the victim of a crime."

Since they were apparently in contact with this dirtbag, didn't they see this coming? Perhaps they were just being well-intentioned by shifting their front page to a blog with information for their users, but since they don't host the blog, that seems like dirty pool. Spammers are not known for being the most easy-going people in the world and sure he made threats about a DDoS. Seems a bit iffy. It could all be above board but without more info, who knows?

I find it interesting that they supply spammers with the addresses of their clients, so the spammers can avoid emailing them. Wouldn't a spammer get that info when they get bombarded by unsubscribe requests? Seems like handing the fox the keys to the henhouse while you slip off for a brewski.

Re:Shifting attack

They don't supply spammers with the addresses of their members. What they do is offer a tool that cleans our email addresses (which are contained in an encrypted database) out of their spam address databases. So all that was done is the spammer in question compared a pre-cleaned version with a post-cleaned version and any addresses that no longer appeared were obviously members of BlueSecurity.

Also, the spam reports that are sent out are sent from a proxy type email address. My normal address wouldn't show up, but [e-mail] is where it would come from.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with sending 1 unsubscribe request per piece of spam I get. BlueSecurity has just automated this method so I don't have to take the time, and they also handle escalation to the proper authorities if the situation isn't resolved.

If the spammer perceives getting 1 unsubscribe request per spam he sends a DDOS attack then I would think the best course of action would be not to send to those people. Heck, we are the ones who wouldn't buy anything from them anyway.

Also, based on what I have read in the blog itself (when it was still accessible) it was a user in the comments that suggested redirecting the site and error pages to the blog so users would at least have some clue what was going on. It's likely they took the advice without contemplating the potential outcome.

Re:Shifting attack

Does Bluesecurity have a linux or mac client yet? Spammer is an idiot. 1) he raises awareness of what bluesecurity does. 2) he makes it look like BS works -- why else would he waste resources he could be using to spam or extort people, it must be hurting him. Effectively, this is great for PR Bluesecurity -- how much would a worldwide advertising campaign have cost?

hahaha

So, they fucked up SixApart and now are trying to divert the attention from the real problem?

Everyone keep's knocking blue...

But have they got any better suggestions. The federal government is a *Joke* about bringing any kind of justice down on this filth, and so the masses remained *outraged* and *victimized*. To me a (A computer tech) I see people's computers every day that have been turned into Zombies. Some so bad that they have to be reformated. They are bringing in their computers to me, and paying hard cash for me to fix it and prevent it from happening again. That's real money, real damages everyone is having to pay every day. I guess you could spin it in a positive light and say it's good for the tech industry, but not if people start becoming afraid to even get on the internet because of what might happen to their computer. This is theft, this is vandilism and the governements of the world are practically standing by and watching it happen.

So, do you have any better suggestions, if not then I kindly ask you to ommit your views until you can add something to the cause.

Just post these guys' addresses and photos...

If a kneecap or two happens to get broken, well, so be it...

For those of you Blue Frog users...

I've devised a method [slashdot.org] to keep opting out while Blue Security's down. I posted it on my journal.

The next step is automating the process, perhaps making a new version of Blue Frog that doesn't rely on a centralized server. Do that, and we'll regain our mailboxes.

Let's not forget guys...

*Puts on asbesto suit*

That most DDOS attacks right now are done using botnets. If we should blame someone (besides our mediocre congress), it's Microsoft for having such a weak security in their desktop OS. And for not updating pirated copies [slashdot.org], which are used as botnets too!

Tucows DNS attack?

Does anyone know if there's a connection between this and the attack on Tucows managed DNS service? The timing seems too close for this to be a coincidence...

Cheers,
Graham

Backbone Subversion

From TFA:

"...the company has been in contact with the spammer via ICQ and that the spammer had claimed that he had carried out what he called a "backbone subversion" attack against a tier-one IP backbone."

So what might "backbone subversion" be?

Breaking point

Speaking as one of the people who helped start the last bluesecurity article, I think we've all had enough time to reflect and debate on the 'fight fire with fire' technique that blusecurity has enacted. What this new DDOS attack has brought to the table is something a little different. Before the attack, Bluesecurity would send an equal amount of opt out requests as spam. THIS DDOS attack on bluesecurity, which is clearly illegal, is the breaking point. I'm not sure WHAT going to break, (of than someones ISP) but it has shed light on spammers intentions. Spam artists have always relied on the fact that their activities arent spefically illegal. With this attack they have really crossed the line- This event could be the event that got some sort of anti spam- legislation rolling, (or it might have the opposite effect). Something should come out of this though, if only to be remembered the 'bluesecurity incident'. Personally I was pretty pissed having some jackass hold my gmail account for ransom, especially since bluesec. was so ridiculously effective. FYI, despite the threats, I have recieved no greater amount of spam than when I was first threatened on monday (sunday). I dont think their database was compromised despite what joe spammer tells us.

Go open source

Wordpress [wordpress.org] is an excellent open source blogging tool. Couple that with Bad behavior [ioerror.us] and Spam Karma 2 [unknowngenius.com] and you've got yourself a near impenetrable blog to spam in your comments. The new version of Wordpress has tools to migrate from some popular blogging systems, so.. go check it out.

Take them out

The spammer is in Russia. Let's hire the mafia nd take him out. Blue security has 500,000 members. If we all put in $1.00 each, we should manage to hire someone to take the spammer out. He won't be a problem after that, and he won't send any more spam.

500 000 is nothing

They need more people so that it becomes non-viable to attack the community.

I've not heard of BlueSecurity before, but after those stories, I'm signing up with them. I urge anyone who wants to help fight against spam and vandalism on the Internet do the same.

After all, when noone can take care of a problem for you, it's time to step up and solve it yourself.

Stop Being Cute About This

He says he knows who's behind it. He would not give a name, but said it was a "top four" spammer, who speaks Russian.

Stop being cute about this and just tell us who. Information in power, and you're only facilitating this person's ability to continue to hide until you unmask him/them.

SixApart should sue them

Need an analogy to understand why SixApart should sue? It'd be like a corrupt police unit grabbing a school bus full of kids to use as human shields in the middle of a gun battle with a gang while the cops try to fall back and call for backup.

Blue Security are idiots

Let's review, shall we?

First, these idiots set up an "anti-spam" service whose response to abuse is...abuse.

Second, they use a fraudulent corporate name. (Use Google and search Usenet.)

Third, they locate themselves on a network also happens to house one of the scummiest spammers on the planet.

Fourth, they decide to redirect an incoming attack at an innocent third party.

The only surprising thing is how many morons have actually DEFENDED these idiots.

Recommendations:

1. Permanently blacklist their domain(s).
2. Firewall off their network.

Tucows services still recovering from DDoS

"Reshef indicated that a few thousand domains managed by a top-five domain name registrar may have been impacted by the attack too, but an executive at the registrar told us that it had seen some upstream troubles but no direct attack."

Ha! All of Tucows services, including the managed dns and email defense services were completely down most of yesterday. The managed DNS service is still impaired until the new IPs of ns1.mdnsservice.com and ns2.mdnsservice.com propagate (they just this morning changed the TTL to 1200 secs %-).

status.tucows.com

Managed DNS Service Degraded Performance - restore time is currently unknown Beginning at approximately noon Wednesday May 3rd the Tucows network was under a severe DDOS attack. To stop the attack, we have changed the IP addresses of the servers. If you are using IP addresses in order to connect to MDNS, you will have to update your records. Also, any nameserver with a long TTL should be updated in order to use the new info. Next Update Time:15:20 UTC, 04 May 2006",/i>

bluesecurity.com domains

nobody commented yet that Blue Security have now mapped all their domains to "localhost" (127.0.0.1) ?

To Stop Spam

As always needs mentioned, Spam would not exist if it didn't have a market. The base problem is, as it has always been, that people respond to this.

People could stop clicking, but that is unlikely to happen. Especially in America, people are always looking for the easier path: be it cheaper medication, promises of enhanced "performance," tales of rapid weight loss while sitting on your couch, or the constant get-rich-quick scheme.

If people actually thought... yes, used higher brain functions... they may realize that it is virtually all just BS.

It could also be that the general masses don't realize that everytime they click on a link or reply to an email, someone is making money. And that is a problem with awareness of how the internet works. Most seem happy to just know that it works.

Just not trying hard enough

I'm really disappointed in this mysterious top 4 spammer. I've been a member of blue security for somewhere around 4 months and I haven't recieved a single threatening email from him/her/it. I mean come on. I must have forwarded thousands and thousands of pieces spam to blue securtiy and yet he hasn't tried to black mail me once. Whats wrong with me? Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough, I only have 3 email addresses registered with the frog. OK mysterious spammer you've made your point. Only the best anti spammers get your attention so I will redouble my efforts and add add 6 new addressess to the protected registry. That will learn you to ignore me.

Why not...

Just pull the plug on the web server... or
redirct the domain name to 127.0.0.1(taking up to 24-48 hours to update) as one of the other posters posted...

Why I ask is because where I work we had a similar problem and sence I maintain our web server we had no choice but to unpluge the network cable. Waited 5 minutes and pluged it back in and vwala! no more DOS.
My best guess was that as soon as the DOS'er saw that our site was "down" they/it thought that there task was completed.

It is almost( but not quite the same) as if some one took a ethernet cable and created a loop on the same pair of switchs. (i.e. two switches are connected to each other. Then some random idiot looks at them and plugs in a spare cable in to both, creating a network loop.)

BlueSecurity on holiday? Unacceptable

Six Apart mitigated the attack to the point where it was no longer causing major availability problems, but had been unable to contact Blue. The anti-spam firm is headquartered in Israel, where May 3 was a public holiday.

This is a 24/7 business. A serious online service vendor can't have company holidays. Least of all in the security business.

Blue Security's Blog

Blue Security Blog [blogs.com]

Netcraft Article on DDoS [netcraft.com]

My original article on the attack 4/1/06 [blogspot.com]

The DDoS started with invalid PHP requests. I think the spammer is using a combination of methods to disable Blue Security now, but that's just an assumption. The question is, how long are spammers going to focus their efforts on the counter attack? Using their resources to attack Blue Security means less resources to send profitable spam. The spammer wants me to unregister from Blue Security's site, but at the same time, disabled it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to cave in to extortion. Right now I'm happy to have Gmail intercepting spam so others don't have to deal with it. I guess you can say I and the rest of the Blue Security community are drawing fire for the rest of ya'll.

Bluesecurity DNS entries are poisoned

C:\Documents and Settings\davygrvy>NSLOOKUP -type=any BLUESECURITY.COM
Server: cns.sanjose.ca.sanfran.comcast.net
Address: 68.87.76.178

Non-authoritative answer:
BLUESECURITY.COM internet address = 127.0.0.1
BLUESECURITY.COM
primary name server = ns1.mdnsservice.COM
responsible mail addr = hostmaster.mdnsservice.COM
serial = 743954502
refresh = 10001 (2 hours 46 mins 41 secs)
retry = 7200 (2 hours)
expire = 2419200 (28 days)
default TTL = 86400 (1 day)
BLUESECURITY.COM nameserver = 127.0.0.1
BLUESECURITY.COM MX preference = 100, mail exchanger = 127.0.0.1
BLUESECURITY.COM MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = 127.0.0.1

It seems the MDNSSERVICE.COM is responsible for the data entries. The good data is this:

C:\Documents and Settings\davygrvy>"c:\Program Files\Dig.exe" @dns.netvision.net
.il reports.bluesecurity.com +all

; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> @dns.netvision.net.il reports.bluesecurity.com +all
; (1 server found)
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 38
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;reports.bluesecurity.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
reports.bluesecurity.com. 3600 IN A 67.15.111.240

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
bluesecurity.com. 3600 IN NS nypop.elron.net.
bluesecurity.com. 3600 IN NS dns.netvision.net.il.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
dns.netvision.net.il. 86400 IN A 194.90.1.5
nypop.elron.net. 86400 IN A 199.203.1.20

;; Query time: 234 msec
;; SERVER: 194.90.1.5#53(194.90.1.5)
;; WHEN: Thu May 04 10:43:24 2006
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 153

awright ... fess up...

I don't associate spammers with the sort of people who have brains. This means that the spammers are hiring brains (not that it takes much brainpower to write php but I digress)... The sort of brains they'd hire are probably slashdot geeks....

So which of you scumbags is responsible for this.

community.bluesecurity.com back online?

;; ANSWER SECTION:
community.bluesecurity.com. 3600 IN A 64.62.177.88

http://64.62.177.88/ [64.62.177.88]

It loads, but the forums are missing.

Spammers = Mafia?

Seems to me that when people try to shut down the spammers, the spammers strike back, ala the Mafia

My froggie can't join the pond :(

BF needs two servers to function: members.bluesecurity.com and wd.bluesecurity.com. It appears that sixapart.com is hosting a dummy members.bluesecurity.com for the moment @ 204.9.178.12

Re:Don't let Blue Security fool you...

Another Spammer posing as an anonymous coward?

Claiming that Six Apart should take legal action against Blue Security because criminals were attacking Blue Security is absurd. It's like blaming the rape victim for getting raped.

All us Frog users have been desperate for news about our pals at Blue Sec. I appreciate the effort they took to get word out to us. The fact that the spammers then directed their attack towards SixApart shows just how desperate and belligerent they are. They are greedy godless bastards. And their actions shall undo themselves.

What will the emo kids do?

Come to slashdot and mod you down, obviously.

Re:Staged by BlueSecurity for publicity

Oh, get real... you're asumption is FOS