Spammers beware--hostile amphibians are once again

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

First there was Blue Frog, a community antispam effort that stopped operating last week after Blue Security, the company that started the project, came under a withering denial-of-service attack.

Out of the ashes comes Black Frog Okopipi, part of a project that is apparently willing to become a flag bearer in the fight against spam. The project, dubbed Okopipi, is developing the Black Frog Okopipi antispam software as an open-source project, according to the group's wiki.

"This project aims to become a distributed replacement of antispam software Blue Frog," the Okopipi wiki states. The project merges two separate efforts--Okopipi and Black Frog--that arose after the demise of Blue Frog.

Blue Security waged a sort of do-it-yourself spamming campaign against the spammers. It said that more than 500,000 customers downloaded its Blue Frog software, which automatically sent replies back to mass e-mails. If all of these customers' systems responded, the spammers' systems would be overwhelmed. would get annoyed.

But the Web sites of Blue Security and some of the company's partners were knocked out last month by a massive distributed denial-of-service attack. In such an attack, scores of computers try to continuously log onto Web sites, in an effort to overtax the servers.

Okopipi's battle plan is to avoid depending on a centralized server, creating a target too big to be taken out by a single DOS attack.

"It will be based on a P2P network (the frognet)," according to a posting on the wiki. "On failure to connect, it could still opt out given e-mail addresses."

Participants will send reports of spam e-mails to Okopipi, which will use "handlers," which include dedicated servers, to analyze it. To avoid suffering the same fate as Blue Security, Okopipi's staff will not disclose information about its servers.

"Only the Okopipi administrators will know their locations," the group said on its wiki [in a brainstorming session]. This should make a DOS attack "very difficult," it said.

The Okopipi wiki said that the Black Frog Okopipi software will set participants' systems to automatically click the "opt-out" or "unsubscribe" links contained within spam--sending a response to the mailers advertised website. The software is still being developed.

Richi Jennings, an analyst at security research company Ferris, said that Okopipi should be careful if it decides to fight fire with fire.

"The project should also take care not to cross the line from legitimate spam complaints to attacking spammers using DDoS-like techniques," Jennings wrote on a posting to Ferris' Web site.

Source: CNet

Couple of things I'd like to add:

*The Frog will be sending opt-outs to the advertsied website, not the opt-out address in the e-mail, but it'll be throttled to stop a DoS attack.

*The network's still being designed - the topology referenced in the article are suggested ideas on the wiki. Although it WILL be P2P.

Further info: Okopipi's website | Okopipi Wiki | FAQ

Edit, I've made some corrections to the cnet article :)

Edited May 29, 2006 by M2Ys4U

[webeagle12]

but spammers still can trace it back no matter what :unsure:

[grik]

Hope this works.....i will try to give my support, everyone should be envolved in this war !!

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

but spammers still can trace it back no matter what :unsure:

And do what? There's no single point of failure to attack...

[user47397]

Please not that Black Frog is another project that merged into the Okopipi project.

[Shof]

Spammer should go to jail if caught

[The Teej]

but spammers still can trace it back no matter what :unsure:

And do what? call the cops? Spam their inboxes? lol

[Rudy]

when will they leanr that its pretty useless....

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

when will they leanr that its pretty useless....

Who, The spammers or anti-spam guys?

[ToneKnee]

Who, The spammers or anti-spam guys?

I believe that he is saying that fighting spammers is pointless! :p

[Pupik]

I'm ready to do anything against spammers (Even DDOSing them (Yeah, yeah. I'm running that vampire script, but I don't see that helps. Specialham is still running.)).

I'm sick of opening my email client and get spam in masses. And no, there's no build-in spam filter in Outlook.

This is what I get after not checking my inbox for 3 hours:

[Pink Floyd Veteran]

I'm not a big fan of fighting war with war

Sending mass email back to spammers, I don't think this is the way to fight spam.

[Maxious]

I'm not a big fan of fighting war with war

Sending mass email back to spammers, I don't think this is the way to fight spam.

???

"The Okopipi wiki said that the Black Frog software will set participants' systems to automatically click the "opt-out" or "unsubscribe" links contained within spam--sending a response to the mailers."

"It is important to understand that Okopipi is NOT a Denial of Service (DOS) network. The network is designed to specifically PREVENT overloading merchant servers. It's purpose is simply to empower users to complain about the spam that they receive."

[wildduck]

sounds great. i hope they manage to create a nice anti spam tool (Y)

[dafonzken]

Jup. Me too. I used the blue Frog on gmail, shame it's gone.

Although I must admit that the built-in anti-spam of gmail is kick-ass too :)

[akav0id]

the bluefrog looks like the azureus logo. Are they linked?

[cybershark]

It looks like to me most people would rather pretend spam doesn't exist or it isn't a problem, than try to help with fighting it.

For this project to work, it's going to need at least a million participants.

Much more aggressive legislation is need for going after botnets which a lot of major spammers are using.

I'm sorry but ignorance is no excuse for your computer ending up a "member" of a botnet.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

I'm not a big fan of fighting war with war

Sending mass email back to spammers, I don't think this is the way to fight spam.

Uhm, no, we're not going to be sending anything back to the actual spammers at all.

???

"The Okopipi wiki said that the Black Frog software will set participants' systems to automatically click the "opt-out" or "unsubscribe" links contained within spam--sending a response to the mailers."

"It is important to understand that Okopipi is NOT a Denial of Service (DOS) network. The network is designed to specifically PREVENT overloading merchant servers. It's purpose is simply to empower users to complain about the spam that they receive."

Correct, apart from the click the opt-out links, that's wrong. What it really does it goes to the advertised URL and sends an opt-out there.

the bluefrog looks like the azureus logo. Are they linked?

Okopipi is the native's name for Dendrobates Azureus - the same frog :)

[black udder]

I was a part of the blue frog community. Some of the things that were not mentioned or made very public were:

1) The spammer took their entire list of e-mails and now has spoofed his spam to show the user e-mails (one is mine) as the "sent by" e-mail. So now I receive hundreds failure messages a day.

2) The spammer, instead of just not sending spam to folks that don't want it, decided to start an 'internet war'. He decided to use DDOS attacks and shut down websites. It is he that said, "Leave me alone or I will shut you down."

Can't really blame him. He must be making millions.

To me, this sounds like a bully and a criminal. How different is, "Stop interferring with my spam business or I'll shut down your connectivity" from "Give me your lunch money and I won't beat your ass."

This isn't just a matter of fighting spam, this is a matter of legitimate social citizens standing up and saying, "No. This is not the manner in which our Internet is to be used."

Before you go defending some of these people ask yourself these two questions:

1) Why don't their e-mail spams have an opt-out request?

2) Why don't they ever list their name or address? Every legitimate business that I know about will do that. It's only the criminals that are hiding.

[yisman]

"The project should also take care not to cross the line from legitimate spam complaints to attacking spammers using DDoS-like techniques," Jennings wrote on a posting to Ferris' Web site.

Why? Sometimes to defeat something, you do have to descend to their level. You can't take the high road when your opponent is placing mines and bombs under that very road you tread on.

I'll keep my eye on this, but I'll wait until I see how it goes.

I'm not a big fan of fighting war with war

Sending mass email back to spammers, I don't think this is the way to fight spam.

And what is your idea, exactly? Giving up? :rolleyes:

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Why? Sometimes to defeat something, you do have to descend to their level. You can't take the high road when your opponent is placing mines and bombs under that very road you tread on.

Because staying legal is the only thing that'll keep our project going.

[yisman]

I was a part of the blue frog community. Some of the things that were not mentioned or made very public were:

1) The spammer took their entire list of e-mails and now has spoofed his spam to show the user e-mails (one is mine) as the "sent by" e-mail. So now I receive hundreds failure messages a day.

Yep. At first, I got the nonsense spam. Now, after they've already killed Blue Frog, they've started doing what you described, and I've been getting tons of failure messages in my G-mail account daily, even though I obviously never sent any of those e-mails.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Yeah, it's called Joe Jobbing...

[yisman]

Because staying legal is the only thing that'll keep our project going.

Good luck and I hope it works out, but I'm convinced that the only way the spammers can be taken down is by turning what they've been doing back onto them.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Good luck and I hope it works out, but I'm convinced that the only way the spammers can be taken down is by turning what they've been doing back onto them.

Blue Security showed that this method actually worked at reducing spam. I know that the levels of spam reaching my inbox fell dramatically after using it.