From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2003 - 00:33:39 MST
My ISP is under spam attack again. According to first level tech
support its "some guy" using an algorithm that cycles through letters
in the alphabet changing some part of an email address or something
and overloading the ISP's capacity.
It occurs that this sort of spam attack could be used as a crude
sort of communications weapon. I'm a sceptical guy and hold to
Occam's razor (though I'm not sure I always spell it right). But it
does "seem" sometimes that whenever I post on Iraq I loose my
ability to communicate in a timely fashion because I don't get
incoming messages.
As a matter of fact in the last few days I've sent an email message to
the office of the Australian Opposition leader and three other senior
shadow ministers (defence, attorney general, foreign affairs). I've
posted on the topic of Iraq to the Washington post (Bob Woodward
and a couple of reporters) to the American Society of International
Law list and to the ExI list.
I can prove (should anyone doubt and care) most of my possibly
"unlikely" statements. For instance I did get an email receipt from
the office of the Opposition leader because I have enough experience
as a lobbyist to look to retain an audit trail and to remove deniability.
I suspect my frustrations *are* coincidental but I can understand
emotionally why "believers" can jump to conclusions when frustrated.
I can also see how frustration could be made to make folks look
unbalanced. On one occassion at least replies sent to me from the ExI
list (I could see them on the archive) never arrived at all. Real bounces
(where posts are lost) seem like pretty stark breakdowns in an ISPs
customer service and are unlikely for that reason to occur all too often
or at least I imagine this perhaps in niavete about ISP quality.
I also wonder how useful spam attacks of the above sort might be
as a means of stopping communication between particular users.
I.e how hard it is to stop someone getting replies in a timely way by
overwhelming their isp? In my case I am only slightly inconvenienced
but if someone is trying to get a message through and they only have
my standard email address then, for now, they can't and I can't know
that they are even trying, unless they are on the ExI list or the ASIL
list where I've got other ways of finding out what's sent but not of
responding so easily (at this stage).
My second email address is paatschb@hotmail.com
Sorry for the public laundry but there is perhaps a legitimate
question in here. Can spam be used in this way, in theory, to
frustrate communication deliberately? Seems crude but at least
it seems to buy some time. Perhaps a major ISP cannot be so
easily closed down by spam. I know I plan to check out a major
sometime soon but the changing over is not real convenient.
Any thoughts? (I won't see them for a bit ;-) ).
Brett Paatsch
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