A dispute between a mysterious Russian spammer and an Israeli anti-spam firm spilled over to the rest of the Internet on Wednesday,
when denial of service attacks aimed at the Israeli firm's Web site knocked out servers that host millions of blogs.
Blogging company Six Apart suffered a sophisticated denial of service attack Tuesday afternoon, Pacific Time, which caused
service outages at all of Six Apart's Web sites, including LiveJournal and TypePad. The denial of service attack stems from
an ongoing feud between Blue Security and an unnamed spammer disgruntled over that company's anti-spam crusade, according
to Blue Security CEO Eran Reshef.
Blue Security, based in Haifa, Israel, operates the "Do Not Intrude" list. The company allows individuals to register an e-mail
address on the list, and then tracks spam messages to those accounts with desktop client software, known as "Blue Frog."
When spam e-mail is sent to a Do Not Intrude Member, Blue Security traces the message to its origin, and then bombards the
Web site behind the campaign (known as the "sponsor") with requests to remove the e-mail message from their distribution lists.
Millions of e-mail messages translate into millions of "opt out" requests from Blue Security members, which bog down the spammers'
servers.
In recent days, e-mail users who had registered with the Do Not Intrude list have instead been the target of a concerted spam
campaign and received extortion e-mail messages threatening to continue the campaigns unless the users remove their name from
the Do Not Intrude registry.
The individual behind the attack, who uses the moniker "pharmamaster" and who is believed to reside in Russia, also cut off
traffic to Blue Security's Web site, allegedly by manipulating routing configurations at a large Internet backbone provider
to prevent traffic from outside Israel from reaching Blue Security's servers.
"This guy is adamant about not letting Blue Security be successful," said Reshef. Blue Security's CEO claims to have had instant
message conversations with "pharmamaster," whom he describes as technically sophisticated and apparently all-powerful, but
also desperate.
"This is not some kid. This is somebody who has the capacity to take down any site. He's like a weapon of mass destruction,"
Reshef said.
Among other things, Reshef said that "pharmamaster" claimed to have a contact at UUNET who would do his bidding. Rather than
launch a denial of service attack against BlueSecurity.com, the spammer instructed the contact to alter the routing tables
so that traffic from outside Israel would not reach the company's servers. Technical staff at Blue Security saw traffic to
the company's site drop precipitously shortly after 4:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Reshef said.
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