On Wednesday, May 17th, 2006, anti-spam company Blue Security shut the doors on its controversial Blue Frog anti-spam service. While reasonable minds can and do
differ over the methods used by the Blue Frog service, some calling it
"innovative", some calling it "abusive", nobody can say that they weren't having an effect. In fact, they had such an impact that
Blue Frog found themselves the target of a DDOS (distributed denial of service)
attack orchestrated by a top spammer calling himself PharmaMaster. PharmaMaster
also attacked Blue Security's blog hosting company and registrar, and,
ultimately, their customers.
The attacks were brutal, and unrelenting. It has been estimated that the
attacks were sent through tens of thousands of compromised computers.
These compromised computers, known as "zombies" - and which when organized into a
network under one entity's control are known as "botnets"- are for the most part
regular PCs, owned and used by regular people. People who have no idea that
someone has hijacked their computer and Internet connection.
The attacks were so intense and destructive that Blue Security's CEO was forced
to conclude that for the good of the Internet, they needed to shut the service
down.
A question which we must all ask ourselves is "How was one person able to cause
so much destruction?" and the answer is "Because millions of people allowed him
to do so - by not securing their computers."
Computers become compromised and hijacked when they are infected by worms, viruses, trojans, and spyware.
These things search out and find any computer that is ever connected
to the Internet. Got a computer? Got an Internet connection? Your computer
has been exposed.
The thing is, it's easy and inexpensive (even free) to protect your computer from these
things, but so many people think that it can't happen to them - or that it's
too complicated - or that if their
computer is symptom free then it must be safe. Not so.
Thousands of
compromised PCs are churning out millions of pieces of spam - right now - while you are
reading this. And their owners have no idea that it's happening. Your
computer may be sending spam or participating in a DDOS right now - while you
are reading this. Would you
know?
By securing your computer you help to shut down spammers. Because the reason
that spammers can do what they do with those tens of
thousands of computers is because tens of thousands of people have not secured
their computer. It's as simple as that.
And the solution is at your fingertips.
Secure your computer - help shut down a spammer.
For information on how you can easily secure your computer - for free - please
see this article at our corporate blog site: Take Back the Net - Secure
Your Computer
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Please copy this icon and display it on your website along with this link and
text:
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And for goodness sake, secure your computer!
Help take back the net!
"Take Back the Net" is an initiative of The Institute for Spam and Internet
Public Policy (ISIPP). ISIPP is committed to helping to rid
the Internet of spam and other illegal activities, and to helping people to
secure their computers. Our "Take Back the Net" initiative is one way in which
we're helping.
