3/31/2003 4:15:29 PM, "T. Alexander Popiel" <popiel@wolfskeep.com> wrote:

In message: <3E893DA7.31420.20D35DB@localhost> "Richard Jowsey" <richard@jowsey.com> writes:

...

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We have to be careful with this. It would be relatively simple to stymie, by simply adding two urls, the spam one, and an unrelated innocent site. Or three urls, or whatever...

Spammers are simple folk. They won't be putting no innocent url's in these spams...

Spammers might be simple folk, but serious crackers (not the script kiddies) certainly are not. If there comes to be a widely deployed tool with this sort of fetch-what-I-tell-you-to behaviour, then it will get exploited by people wanting to do a denial of service attack or similar. Why bother sending out your own IRC-controlled worm, when there's already remote-controllable spamfilters ready and waiting to pound a site into the ground? After all, writing (and releasing) a worm is already recognized as a crime, but the legality of just sending out a not-as-innocent-as-it-looks email blast is still in contention...

EXCELLENT point, Alex. Case closed.

- Alex

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