Spammers Mount Heavy Counterattacks

[Timothy M. Lyons]

Spammers Mount Heavy Counterattacks
By Web Watch
WashingtonPost
Sunday, September 28, 2003; Page F07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8347-2003Sep27.html


Spammers won a couple of rounds this week. Tennessee-based Internet service
provider Compu-Net Enterprises said it has discontinued a service it ran to
fight unsolicited e-mail after being targeted by spammers last weekend.

Until this week, Compu-Net hosted a "black hole" list of junk e-mail senders,
containing the numerical Internet protocol addresses of e-mail servers that
were known sources of spam. Network administrators and Internet service
providers often rely on such lists to determine what servers they won't accept
incoming mail from.

Bill Larson, network administrator for Compu-Net, said that his company
received 10 times the amount of spam it usually gets over the weekend, slowing
its ability to serve its customers. He also said that spammers were sending
forged e-mails that appeared to have been issued from the company.

Larson said his company decided it could not risk running the anti-spam list
because of the risk of losing its paying customers.

Another anti-spammer, Ronald F. Guilmette, gave up the fight this week after a
similar attack. Guilmette said that his investigative work had caused more
than 100 spammers to lose their Internet subscriptions over the past three
months and that such methods had drawn the ire of spammers.

"They're picking us off one by one," said Guilmette, who works independently
as a software developer near Sacramento. "I'm very worried about the future of
spam-fighting."