---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 23:25:04 -0500 From: bennett@peacefire.org To: peacefire-broadcast@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: CYBERsitter caught mail-bombing CYBERsitter has been caught in the act of mail-bombing someone who wrote a letter to Brian Milburn, the CEO of CYBERsitter, complaining about their product. Spefically, a lady names Sarah Salls sent the following letter to Brian Milburn at bmilburn@solidoak.com: http://peacefire.org/archives/SOS.letters/asherah.2.bm.2.4.98.txt She was writing to CYBERsitter regarding their harassment of Peacefire and their blocking of anti-censorship sites, which is described in more detail at: http://www.peacefire.org/censorware/CYBERsitter/ CYBERsitter replied by flooding her account with over 446 junk messages. While the attack was in progress, Ms. Salls had her ISP's postmaster monitor the incoming attack and shut it off. Naturally, her ISP, Valinet.com, kept copies of the mail logs for that day and has passed them on as evidence to their lawyers. A complaint was also forwarded to MCI's security department, which handles network abuse and illegal denial-of-service attacks that are perpetrated by their customers, which include lower-end network users like CYBERsitter: http://peacefire.org/archives/SOS.letters/valinet.2.mci.2.5.98.txt C-Net's NEWS.com picked up on the story and interviewed Sarah Salls, her ISP, me, and Brian Milburn from Solid Oak Software. Their story is at: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,18937,00.html (Note that the C-Net article compares the act of mail flooding with conventional spam, and says that a bill is being considered in Congress that would outlaw what CYBERsitter did. This is not quite true; flooding a person's account with 500 junk messages is a denial-of-service attack, which is already illegal, and it usually gets you in a lot more trouble than spamming would.) Far from denying the accusations, Brian Milburn gave C-Net the following quote: "Certain people aren't going to get the hint. Maybe if they get the email 500 times, they'll get it through their heads... If they send it to my private email account, they're going to get what they get." No kidding, Brian! bennett@peacefire.org (615) 421 6284 http://www.peacefire.org/ ---