Lycos makes screensaver that attacks spammers

May 31, 2001
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Looking for the download now for the sake of curiousity. I expect Lycos will get sued though. Probably illegal here in the states anyway, thus the Europe launch.
 

PolarNorth

Member
Oct 30, 2004
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Cool, teaching the masses the power of distributed attacks and spreading the mindset of a small group to the common user.

How much longer till these same people use there mentaility to "Show" whichever corporation they don't agree with, a thing or two.

 

yoda291

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2001
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actually, having read through, it doesn't seem to actually attack spammers, rather it seems to attack places that use spam as an advertising medium.
 

Phoenix86

Lifer
May 21, 2003
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Moronic, possibly as moronic as spamming. Probably illegal, this is a distributed DDOS attack... I hate spammers as much as everyone else, but this is a dumb solution.

Sucks to be on the same network as those being "targeted", but hey, all in the name of SPAM denial, right? This isn't a precision attack, and it will affect people who are not the target. You guys ok with collateral damage (like SPAM already provides)? What if you server is on the same network/rack?
 

sciencewhiz

Diamond Member
Jun 30, 2000
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Originally posted by: Phoenix86
Probably illegal, this is a distributed DDOS attack...

You do realize that the first D in DDOS is distributed, right? This doesn't really qualify as a Distributed Distributed Denial of Service attack.
 

Phoenix86

Lifer
May 21, 2003
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Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
Originally posted by: Phoenix86
Probably illegal, this is a distributed DDOS attack...

You do realize that the first D in DDOS is distributed, right? This doesn't really qualify as a Distributed Distributed Denial of Service attack.
Yeah, about an hour after I posted it, sue me. :p
 

Chadder007

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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Gotta download this when it comes out....im sure itll be on the UK's Lycos site only though right?
 

nitromullet

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2004
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Originally posted by: Phoenix86
Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
Originally posted by: Phoenix86
Probably illegal, this is a distributed DDOS attack...

You do realize that the first D in DDOS is distributed, right? This doesn't really qualify as a Distributed Distributed Denial of Service attack.
Yeah, about an hour after I posted it, sue me. :p
You also realize that the rest of the letters stand for "Denial of Service"..? This is not exactly a denial of service attack, since a denial of service would dictate that the attack would bring the site down or render it incapacitated. If you read the description of how the app works, it clearly indicates that a DDOS is not the intended result. The idea is that companies that host websites have to pay for them based on the amount of bandwidth that they require to operate. By increasing the bandwidth usage, they are increasing the operating costs of websites that advertise via spam.

I have not decided on whether I feel that the idea is actually a good one, but it is certainly interesting. I like the idea of distributing the hits, since this is what spammers have done by employing bot-nets. However, the spammers are doing it without the individual node's consent.

 

mugs

Lifer
Apr 29, 2003
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Originally posted by: nitromullet
You also realize that the rest of the letters stand for "Denial of Service"..? This is not exactly a denial of service attack, since a denial of service would dictate that the attack would bring the site down or render it incapacitated. If you read the description of how the app works, it clearly indicates that a DDOS is not the intended result. The idea is that companies that host websites have to pay for them based on the amount of bandwidth that they require to operate. By increasing the bandwidth usage, they are increasing the operating costs of websites that advertise via spam.

I have not decided on whether I feel that the idea is actually a good one, but it is certainly interesting. I like the idea of distributing the hits, since this is what spammers have done by employing bot-nets. However, the spammers are doing it without the individual node's consent.

The thing is, the spamming website is not the only one suffering from this, the user's ISP and everyone in between does too.
 

AgaBoogaBoo

Lifer
Feb 16, 2003
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This is a HORRIBLE idea

Let's say a spammer signs up with a large hosting company, then spams out

This screensaver will go attack that server, causing trouble to all the sites on the server. I know yahoo offers hosting, but I hope Lycos does because then I'll get to laugh when they attack their own server