CYBERsitter caught mail-bombing (fwd)

[Ken Williams]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 23:25:04 -0500
From: bennett at peacefire.org
To: peacefire-broadcast at 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 at 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 at peacefire.org     (615) 421 6284     http://www.peacefire.org/

---