Re: Off topic: developers/project manager needed

[petard <petard@freeshell.org>]

On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 10:24:24PM -0800, Gary wrote:
> > And a "Karmic Flood" in response to a Joe job differs from a  DDoS
> > how?
> 
> 
> A DOS (or DDOS) is a small number of individuals sending millions of
> requests to a single webserver to bring it down = illegal and immoral.
> 
> A Karmic flood ( ???) is the millions of people who have been sent an
> unwanted spam email requesting that they visit a website actually doing
> so (even though they might not actually read the site) = legal and
> moral.
> 
Do you understand what a *joe job* is? Say a spammer has a grudge against
a company or individual. One form of revenge they might take is to send
out spam falsely claiming to be from that company or individual, even
down to advertising their web site. This has happened to a number of
discussion forums recently. Normally, this is annoying to the person
whose site/email address is advertised. Your Karmic flood, however,
becomes a DDoS tool that spammers could use to attack web sites. If a
spammer sees that her bulk mail to a particular list of recipients
results in a flood of requests to the site adveritsed, it will not be
long before the spammer "advertises" a site she dislikes in order to
create a denial of service condition/cost them money in hosting fees.

Your "Karmic Flood" is therefore a potent DDoS tool that will be used
against innocent people by spammers, if it ever materializes.

regards,

petard