Took a bit to bring their site up (maybe they are undergoing a DDoS attack from the spammers). But nowhere do they say they are launching a DDoS attack. Of course "...a rose by any other name..."
I need to go back and read what they've said... do they actually mention the term DDoS in their docs?
From their "How Does The Screensaver Work" page
"1. The Screesaver sends a requests to view a SPAM source site (it's only a request so you won't actually see the page).
2. The request is then sent to a database solely consisting of web pages that use SPAM to promote their products.
3. When a large number of screensavers send their requests at the same time the SPAM web pages become overloaded and slow). (They're not disabled completely.)"
Following the link to "More techie information" has...
"The servers used by the screensaver have been manually selected from various SURBL's and verified to be spam advertising sites. To balance the request load generated by the thousands of screensavers, the SPAM targets are selected via a "health check" and it is decided which should be retracted and which should be kept in the cycle of attacks therefore we can ensure no server completely stops working.
The screensaver's engine generates HTTP requests similar to the ones produced by any given browser. The frequency and rate of the requests are controlled by a centrally stored configuration file from where we can halt, decrease of increase the load generated by all clients"
On their "Effects of the Campaign" page they say...
"The sites that are targeted from the Make LOVE not SPAM screensaver aren't making money from getting more requests, it is actually the opposite. These sites don't sell advertising space (banners), they are just trying to sell their products at the lowest cost possible. They have to pay for their bandwidth, therefore more requests means higher bills.
The numbers below show how response times have decreased. (Note: I have removed the actual URL in case the site name triggers your own spam filters)
Domain Name % Traffic www.xxxxxx.com -85% 1.93Gb www.xxxxxx.info -41% 2.16Gb xxxxx.xxxx.com -21% 8.45Gb xxx.xxxxx.com -15% 1.99Gb www.xxxxx.com -10% 4.68Gb xxxxxxxx.biz -64% 7.04Gb"
Note that the largest decrease in available bandwidth to a targeted site in 85% not the 100% that Len is alleging. Lycos is actually acting as a proxy for all the screensavers. The end user sends the requests to Lycos first and then Lycos decides if the requests to the spammers site goes through or not depending on how much traffic the targeted site is already under. Seems that the 85% max they are currently showing is reasonable since the spammer still has 15% of his available bandwidth to use. Also, since Lycos is acting as proxy for this "service" they are bearing a considerable bandwidth expense themselves in receiving and sending out all these requests.
To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
