BlueSecurity makes an antispam product called Blue Frog. Their antispam method involves creating a sort of “Do Not Spam” registry. As part of this service, they contact spammers to get you off their lists. I have no idea how the product works, since I’ve never used their application (and can’t as the site is down). And it seems to be popular.
However, BlueSecurity has apparently made some spammers quite grumpy. Yesterday, blog reader László Stadler started forwarding me some baffling spams. Here’s an excerpt of one:
Today, the BlueSecurity database became known to the worst spammers worldwide. Within 48 hours, the database will be published on the Internet, and your email address will be open to them all. After this, you will see the spam sent to your mailbox increase 10 – 20 fold.
BlueSecurity was illegally attacking email marketers, and doing so with your help. Many websites have been targeted and hit, including non-spam sites. BlueSecurity’s software has been fully analyzed, and contains an abundance of malicious code. This includes: ability to send mass mail to users; the ability to attack websites with Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS); the ability to open hidden doors on any machine on which it is running; and a hidden auto-update code function, which can install anything on your computer and open it up to anyone.
You can view the different spams here, here and here. And Wired had an article today on the situation.
I contacted BlueSecurity about this yesterday and got this reply from Eran:
Hi Alex
You can keep this mail as a collector’s item 🙂
As you may already know, many spammers had already listened to the voice of reason and chose comply with the Registry (see our recent blog posts at http://community.bluesecurity.com for more details). We already have 6 of the top 10 spammers, responsible for over 25% of world spam (over 50% of illegal spam), either complying or approach us to start the process of compliance.This one is trying another approach – something we expected to happen as some spammers may choose to try and avoid removing our members’ addresses from their lists.Our recent successes with some of the world’s top spammers had probably caused other spammers to panic. This particular spammer is using mailing lists he already owns that contain your email address and is now sending such messages to everyone on his list.
Sorry for the inconvenience,
Now the BlueSecurity site appears to have been a victim of DoS attack. It is unavailable.
Curious, I tried to test the application. But since the site is down, I can’t get registered to the service.
Any ideas out there as to what is going on?
Alex Eckelberry
(Thanks Ferg for the Wired link)