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Blue Security Ceases Operations After Vicious Distributed-Denial-of-Service Attack (DDoS)

For more than half a million users of antispam tool Blue Frog furnished by Blue Security, today is a sad day. Wired News has reported that Blue Security has decided to cease operations after a blistering DDos attack that took down its database server and several other sites.

In an interview with Wired News, Blue Security CEO Eran Reshef said the Israel-based company was closing its service Wednesday, May 17th. He did not want to be responsible for an ever-escalating war that could bring down Internet service providers and websites around the world and subject its users to denial-of-service attacks from a well-organized group controlling a massive army of computer zombies.

"Our community would very much like us to continue on the fight against spam, and our community has grown over the last week," Reshef said. "But at the end of the day if we continue doing so, within a few days, major websites will go down. I don't feel that this is something I can be responsible for. I cannot go ahead and rip up the Internet to make Blue Security work. This is not the decision a commercial entity can make."

The abrupt decision ends a high-profile standoff between spammers and a tiny startup whose unorthodox methods had seemingly stymied some of the most prolific purveyors of junk e-mail in the world, if only temporarily. For a few intense days, the fight showed with shocking clarity the lengths to which some spammers will go to protect their businesses, and the devastating arsenals at their command.

The lesson to be learned, Reshef said, is that large ISPs and governments need to recognize that spammers are connected to criminal syndicates and that they, not a small startup, are the only ones who can shut down these networks.

On May 8th, I published a post dubbed, Spam War Gets Hot in which I included an e-mail sent by angry spammers who wanted me to delete Blue Frog from my computer. They threatened that if I did not remove Blue Frog, they would flood my e-mail account with spam. I did not remove the antispam tool and was not flooded with spam, even though the volume did increase. This e-mail said that "Blue Security was illegally attacking spammers, now spammers fight back! These cyber-criminals fought back hard and closed Blue Security. Now we are again at the mercy of these criminals who have demonstrated that they have the technological know-how and resources to kill any opposing party.

Just before the attack, PharmaMaster, considered by some to be one of the 10 worst spammers contacted Blue Security through ICQ and said, "Support (top-tier ISP's name withheld) says: Yes wont be a problem, I'll make sure to block all traffic to this domain very soon just get me reports, mate."

Thirty minutes after Blue Security closed its Israeli site and posted a note on its blog site, PharmaMaster ruthlessly ordered a massive, sophisticated DDoS attack against any site associated with Blue. This attack caused five top-tier hosting providers in the U.S. and Canada, a major DNS provider and a popular blog site to go down for several hours.

PharmaMaster summarized the situation (excerpt from ICQ session): "you know Ii feel sorry for you and all the world 9,000 servers (which) are down :-)"

According to Reshef, PharmaMaster also told Blue Security that if he can't send spam, there will be no Internet. He also said that he will do whatever it takes to continue his fight but acknowledged the power of the Blue Community.

PharmaMaster (excerpt from ICQ session): "Blue Security found the right solution to stop spam, and I can't let this continue." He kept his word and made Blue Security bite the dust.

PharmaMaster represents the ugly face of the Internet. He publicly boasts what he is capable of doing beforehand. People like him should be behind bars and it's the responsibility of governments around the globe to put him there with our cooperation. Today I feel like a fly that has been smacked by a giant and I don't like it. I'm confused as to what I should do next to fight back. However I do know one thing; all their messages will be wiped out of my computer as soon as I see them. If nobody buys their products or services, spam would be defeated, since it has no purpose. Let's start by banning their services and their products. I feel really bad today and will close this post by asking you to fight spammers to the best of your abilities.

With great pain I'm removing Blue Frog from my system, since it's now useless. Today is a sad day.




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