Re: Off topic: developers/project manager needed

[Gary <vex555@gmx.net>]

On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 14:49:08 +0000
petard <petard@freeshell.org> wrote:


> 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.

Yes I do thanks but karmic doesn't attack e-mails. (However it might be
added as a recourse against the 419ers).

On your second point, this is provably the first thing I thought of
after conceiving the idea :) This is what the mass moderation is
for. After someone tags a URL as a spam-using site it is propogated on
the peer-to-peer network. It now appears on the clients at the top of
the 'pending' list for others to check and moderate. If a certain number
of people mod it up - ie confirm it is bad then it becomes active. If
subsequently it turns out to be wrong it can be modded down. With
thousands of users this process would be quick.

This is a very real concern and needs to be dealt with properly, but I
don't see it as unsurmountable. 
Gary