[Mimedefang] Re: Lycos Screen saver that attacks Spammers, Ah more off topic...

[Ian Mitchell]

> From: Randy Hammock <repeater at wr6jpl.ampr.org>
> Subject: Re: [Mimedefang] Re: Lycos Screen saver that attacks
> 	Spammers, Ah	more off topic...
>
> Lycos Screen Saver / Legal Zombies? Just wait until someone figures out
> how to hack all those Lycos zombies out there to perform DDoS's. What
> makes one zombie legal and another illegal?
>

Legal = Volunteerily downloaded with full understanding of circumstances
and consequences, and no packet spoofing or RFC violations.

Illegal = Covertly installed allowing remote control of a system,
modifying of packets to hide source IP address, ignoring RFC rules to
cause a denial of service through exhaustion of resource (SYN flood,
exhausting sessions), attempting active exploits against sources to gain
unauthorized access, spreading itself in a virus like manner, etc...

How is their screensaver any different than running a local Google server,
(other than the fact the requests are much more targetted) or having the
site Slashdotted? (which BTW, all the targets have been) Heck it was even
nice of them to build in traffic throttling, although I for one am curious
to know how that worked seeing as the clients don't know about each
other... hmm...

Now, while they supposedly built their screensaver to "play nice" so as to
avoid criminal prosecution, it doesn't keep them from being sued on a
civil basis. And according to one of the sites they marked for death, I
think they'll be seeing some Cease and Desist letters here shortly.