Not too long ago we saw an antispam vendor DoS’d into submission. Where Blue Security may have failed Spamhaus stood its ground. The RBL provider came under attack today from a massive botnet.
Steve Linford, director of Spamhaus Project, explained that the site was restored to normal operation after technicians were able to filter (null route) attack traffic. It’s not immediately clear who launched the attack, which is far from unprecedented. For example, in September 2003 spammers used PCs infected by the then prevalent SoBig worm to launch an attack against Spamhaus and other anti-spam sites. The attack forced a number of smaller anti-spam sites to close down. Other, less high-profile, denial of service attacks are commonplace and can be considered something of an occupational hazard.
While this may be an occupational hazard I would offer that this a further illustration why spammers whould be hunted down and prosecuted.
[tags]Spam, Spammers, DDoS, Spamhaus, Denial of Service[/tags]