Cyberattacks With Offline Damage

[Jim Gillogly]

R. A. Hettinga forwards John Schwartz' article commenting on Avi Rubin's work:
> In fact, something like what Mr. Rubin describes has
> already happened. Last year, Alan Ralsky, a spam-sending entrepreneur known
> as the "spam king," gave an interview to The Detroit Free Press boasting
> about his 8,000-square-foot house and all the money he made from sending
> unwanted e-mail to hundreds of millions of people at a time. Shortly after
> that article appeared on Slashdot.org, a major online news source for
> technophiles, its readers signed Mr. Ralsky up for thousands of catalogs,
> brochures and more. Soon he was getting hundreds of pounds of mail every
> day. 

This is an older technique -- it was used by irate Usenetters back
in 1994 against Canter & Siegel, lawyers who had just perpetrated the
first profit-oriented spam attack (but the third overall spam attack).
Besides signing them up for catalogs and magazine subscriptions,
they were suposedly sent the Black Fax Loop of Doom by several hopefuls --
the idea is that it will at least run them out of toner, with some
(presumably overly optimistic) chance of setting their fax machine
ablaze.  The hope was that the reaction would be negative enough that
future offenders would be deterred.  Ah, well.
-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	23 Astron S.R. 2003, 17:46
	12.19.10.2.19, 12 Cauac 7 Pop, Fifth Lord of Night


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