tembow
Blue Angel
Premium Member
Joined: Oct 10, 2005
Posts: 2945
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 Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 1:50 am Post subject: Blue Security's Last Two Weeks |
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Message of Closure
Blue Security Ceases Anti-Spam Operations by Eran Reshef, CEO
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When we founded Blue Security in 2004, we believed that if we automated a way for users to rise up and exercise their rights under the CAN-SPAM Act, we could reduce the amount of spam on the Internet.
Over the past few months we were able to leverage the power of the Blue Community and convince top spammers responsible for sending over 25% of the world's spam to comply with our users' opt-out list. We were making real progress in eliminating spam from the lives of our users.
However, several leading spammers viewed this change as a strategic threat to their spam business. The week before last, these spammers launched a series of attacks against us, taking down hundreds of thousands of other websites via a massive Denial-of-Service attack and causing damage to ISPs, website owners and Internet users worldwide. They also began a relentless campaign of email intimidation against many members of the Blue Community.
After recovering from the attack, we determined that once we reactivated the Blue Community, spammers would resume their attacks. We cannot take the responsibility for an ever-escalating cyber war through our continued operations.
As we cannot build the Blue Security business on the foundation we originally envisioned, we are discontinuing all of our anti-spam activities on your behalf and are exploring other, non spam-related avenues for our technological developments. As much as it saddens us, we believe this is the responsible thing to do.
You need not do anything as a result of this change. We will continue to protect your names and addresses and honor all privacy commitments we made to you.
We have concluded we should not take Blue Security to the full deployment stage we originally planned to achieve, but we are proud of what we have accomplished thus far as a young startup company.
We are extremely proud to have had the chance to work with such a devoted and dedicated community: thank you for the vote of confidence you gave us over the past few months as well as the particularly vocal support you have shown over the last two weeks.
We will be innovating and building our technology in new, other directions and will continue to give back to you, our Community.
Thank you for your support,
The Blue Security Team. |
Wired:
Under attack, spam fighter folds
Washington Post:
In the fight against spam e-mail, Goliath wins again
The Guardian:
Spam closes web security firm
LATEST NEWS: - updated May 19 01:00 GMT
Within hours of posting the above message on the bluesecurity.com website, a concerted DNS attack on the DNS name provider took the site down. Also taken down was Prolexic and thousands of its customers, who include banks and financial services. Given the amount of damage wreaked on the Internet by these attacks, closing down the primary target was the most responsibe action. (See the links at the bottom of this item),
To avoid further problems, Blue Frog users must uninstall the browser reporting plug-ins, email reporting tools, and the Blue Frog application immediately.
RECENT EVENTS SUMMARY FROM MAY 1:
A small group of spammers mounted a concerted attack on Blue Security. Over the first 5 days from May 1, they
Stage 1 sent a wave of spam messages containing misleading information about Blue Security, and scurrilous attacks on its executives, urging members to cancel
Stage 2 sent another wave of spam with threats against Blue Security members
Stage 3 sent a third wave of spam purporting to be from members of Blue Frog Members, with forged sender name, Blue Security, but describing its operation in misleading terms. This spam is targetted to annoy those people on the spammer lists who usually complain the most
Stage 4 mounted a denial of service attack on all Blue Security web sites
Stage 5 May 5 0400 GMT sent a fourth wave of email containing the "whois" lookup on bluesecurity.com presumably to remind Blue Security members of the original threat to target them. Subject line: "http://www.bluesecurity.com"
Stage 6 May 6 sent a fifth wave of email again with Subject line: "http://www.bluesecurity.com". Content was an extortion threat, and reference to an attached zip file which did not make it. Forged signature: Blue Security Inc. The forged From: and Reply-to: addresses were taken from the blue security list, as were the To: addresses, so that members would receive both the spam, and some delivery failure messages as well.
Stage 7 May 7 sent a sixth wave of email containing an attack on Blue Security's CEO Eran Reshef. Subject: ""Simulated DDoS Network Attacks and Network Intrusions". Mail refers to Skybox Security Solutions which developed an offering for for that purpose. It quotes "Eran co-founded Skybox Security and served as its Chairman. Prior to Skybox Eran founded and managed Sanctum (acquired by WatchFire), the leader in web application security. Eran holds a variety of security-related patents that are based on his inventions. " The obvious implication is that the beta tested Blue Security should not have been vulnerable to a DDOS attack itself. This spam was a smear campaign directed at the integrity of Eran Reshef personally.
Stage 8 another Joe-Job campaign similar to stage 3. This consisted of a spamming run to a large number of people, where the "From" address was forged using addresses of the Blue Security membership. The effect was a series of bounce-backs coming to Blue Security members, and complaints from recipients of the spam.
Stage 9 DDOS attacks on bluesecurity web sites continued but with diminishing impact due to protective measures.
Stage 10 The focus of the attacks shifted to the DNS provider, UltraDNS. The effect was an outage for over 8 hours of thousands of web sites, including banking and finacial transaction systems
The attackers have spoken of a plan to take over the actual Blue Frog application to launch spam and DDOS attacks. Users are cautioned to remove the application immediately.
As a result of these concerted attacks, Blue Security's profile in the electronic media was considerably raised. High profile Slashdot has had vibrant threads of postings, and other media have been quick to follow suit. The majority of media coverage has been strongly supportive of Blue Security.
The attackers initially failed in their aims. Members of Blue Security had been expecting such a retaliation from the renegade element of the spammer community for some time. If anything, this attack imply drew the community closer, and hardened their resolve to combat the scourge of illegal spam. Furthermore, the initial attack failed to reach the core of the Blue Security service. Spam reporting to Blue Security continued at record levels.
From May 4, the concerted DDOS attack had prevented access to the bluesecurity.com sites, impacting reporting and opt-outs.
The bluesecurity.com system was relocated behind a firewall system specifically designed to withstand Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks. The DDOS provider and many of its customers were prevented from doing business for eight hours as the DDOS attack on their DNS servers continued, leading to the closure of Blue Security in a move designed to protect the integrity of the Intenet itself.
These illegal actions by this small spammer group are a serious mistake. They have laid themselves open to detection, arrest and prosecution.
We live in very interesting times. They are getting more interesting day by day. History is in the making, and you have been in the middle of the action. The Internet is at a watershed.
See also, Prolexic News items:
http://www.prolexic.com/spam/spam-051006.php
http://www.prolexic.com/spam/spam-051706.php
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