Re: How many backbones here are filtering the makelovenotspam scr eensaver site?

[Steven Champeon <schampeo () hesketh com>]

on Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 08:58:03PM +0000, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, Steven Champeon wrote:
>
> > on Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 02:56:29PM -0500, Hannigan, Martin wrote:
> > > Possibly. What will happen if the Lycos botnet gets hijacked?
> > >
> > > The conversations between the clients and the servers don't appear
> > > to be keyed. If a million clients got owned, it would be the
> > > equivalent of an electronic Bubonic Plague with no antidote.
> >
> > You mean, like the existing botnets we already know exist but are
> > already under the control of spammers?
> >
> > What's the difference? Why is everyone so upset about Lycos and nobody
> > seems to be doing much of anything about the /existing botnets/, which
> > conservative estimates[1] already put at anywhere from 1-3K per botnet
> > to upwards of 1-5M hosts total[2]?
>
> perhaps the difference is 'reponsible people' don't go out and recruit
> botnets... Lycos, as a corporate entity with it's business model dependent
> upon the health and wellbeing of the Internet would try to be
> 'responsible', or so I would have thought.

I agree. I also think it's up to the companies providing the Internet
connectivity to the non-Lycos-"owned" botnets to prevent such activity
from affecting others. 
 
> arguing that there are murderers and rapists out there and that 'nothing
> is being done' is hardly reason to become one yourself.

I couldn't agree more that vigilantism isn't the answer. My earlier
remarks were directed to the shock and awe evident in the possibility
that - via Lycos - there might be, heaven forbid, /large numbers of
computers under the control of spammers, that could be used in spamming
and abuse/.

All I was pointing out was that, surprise, surprise, there already are.
So why anyone thinks Lycos' botnet being hacked is /any different/ from
/the current situation/ is utterly beyond my ken. Why would any spammer
bother to hack Lycos' botnet? They /already have their own/.

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