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Counter Attack An ominous report from the front hit the airways in late September. On September 25, Reuters reported that three websites that provide spam blocking lists were hit and shut down by denial of service attacks-massive mailings that overwhelmed their systems. The Spamcon Foundation, Osirusoft, and Monkeys.com were hit in what some experts theorized was the next level in the war on spam. Andrew Barrett of Spamcon was quoted as saying, "There seems to be a methodical, well-planned attempt to use preassembled networks of zombie machines to create sustained denial of service attacks on servers where these block lists run." When you combine the September assault with the theory that the SoBig virus earlier this year was nothing more than an attempt to take over thousands of computers worldwide to be used as forwarding mailers for spam, you might be drawn to an unnerving conclusion. Perhaps the other side is also rolling up and loading their own heavy artillery, and the ping-pong game is about to escalate to trench warfare well beyond our current, maddening cycle of open-delete/open-delete/open-delete/open-delete. |