[plug] Using open relays to mailbomb spammers ?

[Luke dudney]

On 18/02/03 14:18, Brad Campbell wrote:

> G'day all,
>
> A "friend of mine" still getting spam from a couple of companies that 
> just won't quit."They" had an evil thought about mailboming them but 
> then figured of course the ip would be pretty easily traced. Then it 
> occured to "them" to perhaps check orbs or similar and grab a couple 
> of open relays to use to do the dirty work for "them".
> I of course told "them" that this would be a naughty thing to do. What 
> say all of you?
>
BAD idea. Fighting abuse with abuse is never a solution, and futhermore 
is likely to be counter-productive.
Stealing bandwith and resources from an unwitting 3rd party to be used 
in an attack will get your 'friend' in even more trouble.
Try posting that question to news.admin.net-abuse.email and see what 
sort of response you get.

Better solution: LART the spammer's upstream bandwidth provider, web 
hosting provider, DNS provider, and their upstream's upstream provider 
until something happens.
Post the full source of the email to news.admin.net-abuse.sightings with 
subject "[email] <original subject>"

At the very least, have a read of the resources at 
http://www.spamfaq.net/ before advising your 'friend'

Cheers
Luke