Spam attacks again.

From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2003 - 00:33:39 MST

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    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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