[Smite the Evildoers!] [Aaron O.]
Spammers, that is. Article found via Google News.
Lycos has released a screensaver for the Mac and Windows platforms that will attack spammers.
The screensaver, called Make Love Not Spam, will constantly visit Web sites from which spam has been sent. The aim is to flood the spammer’s server with so many requests that it is unable to respond ? resulting in what is know as a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack.
The sad thing is that as of 8:50 AM EST the Make Love Not Spam has already been hacked and displays the following message:
Yes, attacking spammers is wrong, you know this, you shouldn’t be doing it. Your ip address and request have been logged and will be reported to your ISP for further action.
Update from Justin at 12:53 PST: The download site isn’t hacked any more, but it’s really busy.
Man, I really don’t like spammers.
Interesting idea. The slashdotters who know IP well don’t seem to like it, though. Original post on Slashdot here.
OK, I read about a fifth of the comments at slashdot, and so many people were worried about lawsuits against Lycos. Uh, how is a spammer going to sue Lycos? Being a spammer is illegal. If you sue, you have to say, “I’m a spammer,” and you’ll probably get arrested.
I still probably won’t download it, but it’s fun to track the results.
Sounds a little like those lawsuits you get where burglars sue homeowners because their dog attacked them. Or does that only happen under British Law?
There was a case in not so distant history where a burglar was trying to break into a woman’s home and fell through the skylight. He ended up with a broken leg and some other minor injuries. This being America and all he decided to sue the woman for the cost of his injuries and pain and suffering, and he won. He was never charged with any crime for his part in all of this and she was order to pay all his medical expenses and somewhere in the ballpark of $50,000.00 for pain and suffering.
A contract that deals with the commission of a crime cannot be enforced, but you have the constitutional right to commit a crime (yes the actions may be illegal, but you do have the right to break the law and face the consequences for doing so).
It’s still crazily busy at nearly 11PM Pacific time today. The problem with attacking spammers is that they can fight back. Spammers have massive computer systems and huge amounts of bandwidth. The slashdotters mention how easy it would be to direct all their traffic originating from the Lycos screensaver right back to Lycos, thus making Lycos pay for the bandwidth instead.
I’m confused and intrigued at the same time. At home my request times out when I try to access the page. But at work (where I initially accessed the page), I’m still getting an error message. But this time it’s different:
Now I’m a programmer and even I’m not even sure how they did that. I assume they grabbed my IP and redirect me somehow. Anyone have any ideas?
I’m still getting a timeout at home. Likewise, I can sometimes see the site at work, but not always.
I bet it’s not a redirect; it’s just what they put on the page for people with US IP addresses, since this is a Lycos Europe project.