Update on the lycos issue...

[jecook]

I found this mildly amusing.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/01/lycos_spam_attack/


Lycos vigilante attack on spammers has been hit by a vigilante attack. Spammers are suspected.

Lycos was offering a screensaver which, once downloaded, would launch a Distributed Denial of Service attack against spam websites. A DDS attack makes constant requests to a specific part of a website until it gets overloaded and falls over. Such attacks are illegal in most countries. Security firm FSecure advised people not to download the program because of legal concerns.

The "makelovenotspam" campaign was launched yesterday but within hours the front page was replaced with the 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."

At the time of writing the site - www.makelovenotspam.com - was unavailable.

Lycos told ZDNet that no attack had happened. Chief spin doctor Malte Pollman said: "This is a hoax. We have obviously rached our goal and are getting to the spammers. One our servers we don't have any logs of an attack." The company also denied it was launchihng denial of service attacks - just that it was reducing bandwidth to five per cent.

The ZDNet story is here, and there's further comment on the matter at Slashdot. ®

Comments

[bamatone.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHAHA! Whether (you, I, etc.) agree with Lycos or not, this is insanely funny! I noticed the screensaver could not connect to the server, then noticed the web site was down. I suspected an attack, but couldn't be sure.

Glad it's back up now. :P