The Russian Mafia Doesn't Like Spam Either

wattrlz writes "Apparently the current champion of v1*gr4 spamming solicited some of the wrong email boxes. Alexy Tolstokozhev was recently found murdered in his palatial spam-bought estate near Moscow. The implications of this hands on method of system administration are staggering." Update: 10/12 15:28 GMT by Z : Good story. Unfortunately, probably a fake.

Gives a whole new meaning...

[thewiz]

to "Spam Assassin"!

Oops

[bcguitar33]

Looks like there are more ways than just v1agr@ for you to end up a stiff.

Re:Gives a whole new meaning...

[LParks]

He had been missing for a while, and luckily investigators decided to do a DNA test on some unidentifiable canned mystery meat found in his home. The Russian mafia likes irony as much as brutality.

In Republic of Russia

[ackthpt]

Mafia conventiently and discretely deliver YOU!

Re:What is the deal with spam?

[brxndxn]

Can someone make sure this guy is next?

Re:That explains it

[PhxBlue]

Well .. an arrest of sorts.

My money's on cardiac. *Rimshot!*

Let's haul out the checklist!

[clintp]

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (X) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
(X) The police will not put up with it, anywhere other than Russia
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

(X) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, asshole! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
(X) THANK YOU! ONE DOWN. MANY MORE TO GO.

Big Prize?

[jetpack]

Does Tolstokozhev's killer get the SysAdmin Of The Year [sysadminoftheyear.com] award?

Re:That explains it

[markov_chain]

Where do we see evidence spam was sent to the wrong person?

Dude, it's pretty clear-- imagine telling Tony Soprano his dick is small! You would be lucky to get off with a quick shooting.

Re:That explains it

[ackthpt]

Well .. an arrest of sorts.

My money's on cardiac. *Rimshot!*

For spammers this may become known as Death by Natural Causes.

"That's odd I feel strangely different, there's a dead body in here and blood everywhere."
"YOU HAVE MAIL."
"Who are you? Do I know you, have we met?"
"I USUALLY MEET EVERYONE ONLY ONCE."
"Uh. Ooooohh...."

If so, perhaps it will inspire the reality.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

For what it's worth, this story appears to be fake.

If so, I would not be surprised if it inspired the real thing at some point in the near future.

Any bets?

Re:Fake Story?

[Anonymous Coward]

And, in a few days, we can look forward to a dupe of the dupe.

Re:Gives a whole new meaning...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, spam assasinate YOU!

Re:Not the first time

[ShieldW0lf]

That's awesome. I wish we did that more around here.

Re:That explains it

[fatphil]

I've long advocated the death by a million paper cuts.

What's one spam? Perhaps a slight annoyance, but nothing more.
What's one paper cut? Perhaps a slight annoyance, but nothing more.

Right, multiply both by many many million...

spamassassin?

[OverflowingBitBucket]

Well, we changed the scores on a few spamassassin rules on our mailserver yesterday. I guess the changes were far more effective than we had anticipated.

Re:Not the first time

[jollyreaper]

I really would recommend that anyone who gets pissed off when they receive spam read the link the below. It cured me as I actually felt sorry for him by then end:

How long did the sympathy take to wear off?

Re:Gives a whole new meaning...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, spam killfiles YOU!

- fixed

Re:And this is good...why?

[rs79]

"I mean... how exactly does a straightforward post questioning the ethics of murder get moderated as +5 Funny?"

Cause it only goes up to 5.

Re:Lots of little crimes...

[Rebelgecko]

He reportedly made about $2,000,000 from spamming. Let's assume he was responsible for 100,000,000 emails (which would give him an average profit of 5 cents per e-mail, so this number is probably too low). If it takes 10 seconds to open an e-mail, see that it's spam, and then delete it then that's 1,000,000,000 seconds, which is equal to about 32 years. The average life expectancy of a male (who is probably MUCH more likely than a female to be taking viagra or similar pills) in Russia is 60 years. If all the time spent reading spam was concentrated into one 28 year old, it would take him his entire life to read them. Therefore, the spammer in question could have wasted the entire life of a 28 year old, and most people would probably rather be dead than forced to spend the rest of their days ONLY reading penis enlargement advertisements.* Therefore, the spammer in question killed a hypothetical 28 year old and is worthy of capital punishment. Q.E.D.

*If, however, the hypothetical Russian 28 year old purchased the various enhancers, the cumulative effect would would give him a 9,469.7 mile long penis. (assuming an average of 6 inches per enlargement)

Re:In Republic of Russia

[soundhack]

Your first spelling error (conveniently) makes me think your use of discrete, while hilarious, is unintentional. Either way, very funny! (I'm not being sarcastic)

Re:Not the first time

[QuantumG]

and who says geeks are mostly liberal.

Re:Let's haul out the checklist! Q&A

[couchslug]

In Soviet Russia, humour assaults you!

Re:Not the first time

[ozmanjusri]

and who says geeks are mostly liberal.

We are.

Some of us just take Spam Assassin [apache.org] a little too literally.

Re:Not the first time

[jaxtherat]

Dude, have you ever TRIED to use outlook??

Re:Not the first time

[Basehart]

Oh, and then you set fire to them when they're done.

Re:Not the first time

[cp.tar]

I would imagine the sheer volume of "best pr1ce c1ali5" would overwhelm them and probably burn any such details out of their minds in short order - remember they have to read each email very rapidly, can't pause the stream, and would have no facility to record such things. It's a good point though - some filtering may be possible, or you could just assume that the spammer would be humanely disposed of at the end of their sentence.

Well, of course.

They'd be so brain-dead by the end of their sentence that they could safely be disposed of in, say, the government.

Re:Not the first time

[beaviz]

Believe me, the thought of buying an international plane ticket and a weapon has crossed my mind many times.

We, here at the NSA, thank you for your comment.

Re:Not the first time

[abb3w]

This just rings of organized crime "moving in". You saw the same thing in the olden days when the rum runners were "consolidated" by guys like Al Calpone.

Probably just in eastern Europe. The American Mafia may be involved in prostitution, illegal waste disposal, drug running, bookmaking, extortion, and (of course) money laundering, but they are still a Family business with some standards.

The Russian mafia doesn't HAVE to like spam

[mrjb]

Because in Soviet Russia, ...

Re:Not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

you're reading slashdot and complain that spammers cause people wasting their time? tee hee hee