Risk: Informational
Members of Blue Security's anti-spam system have been sent aggressive messages from an unknown spammer, which attempted to intimidate users into opting out of the service. Moreover, sizeable Denial of Service attacks have been launched on the website, probably by angry spammers.
Blue Security's Founder and CEO, Eran Reshef, recently said: "Blue Security's Do Not Intrude Registry is encrypted and individual member emails are not exposed to would-be spammers. The renegade spammer that sent today's email is using scare tactics and outright lies to further his agenda - to stop the growth of the Blue Community. Our members are not in any jeopardy of 'exposure' as the spammers already have their addresses. That is why they joined the Blue Community - to stop spam at its source by seeking compliance with the registry."
Guy Rosen at Blue Security provided SANS' Internet Storm Centre with an update on the DoS situation: "Monday: Spam-based threats and accusations; Tuesday: Our website is cut off from outside Israel by a mysterious routing change; Later on, huge DDoS lashes out at our servers; DDoS continues as we relocate our service to bring it back up. One estimate was of something of the order of 10 million packets/sec coming in."
By the middle of May, spammers had turned more vicious and were threatening to start circulating Trojans to all of Blue Security's members, unless it ceased operating its anti-spamming service. It did, which is a shame, as it actually succeeded in pursuading some spammers to stop spamming. Blue Security is now looking into alternative ways of preventing spam.