I'm so tempted to jump in on this. If its wrong, well, it won't be my first time. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4061375.stm Boo ********ing hoo. Electronic Vigilanteeism kicks ass. I deserve my sock full of doorknobs.
My understanding from my brief foray into the dot com world is that DNS attacks are the worst sin you can commit on the Web -- even beyond spamming. (Though spammers will have their own particular circle of Hell assigned to them). The practical problem, of course, is that spammer can just transfer over to another site, do a round of spamming, until they are overwhelmed again, and then keep moving (kind like the Taliban in their Afganistan caves). That cost is minimal, whereas bandwidth costs could be substantial -- and you can run those up fast. Either way, crush the b----ards.
I get the feeling that we may have an unprecedented *second* love-in thread here. Honestly, does anyone (other than spammers obv.) have a problem with this?
I used to work operations at this airline and somehow our fax number was given out and we got faxes all day long. So, one guy decided to tape a few sheets of black paper to make a loop and faxed back the people who were the worst spam faxers. The black takes ages to print on their end and the fax didn't end until we had enough laughs. Oh, I miss a few aspects of an office type job...only a few.
I guess it's kinda like when a pedophile is murdered in prison. Yeah, murder's wrong, but still . . .
^ Hahem ... Nothing like overstating the case of a Friday morning. I heard about this in headline form on the radio on the way home yesterday but missed the actually story. Interesting. And, of course, intensely satisfying. To answer the thread question, it's an obvious no, it's not wrong.
the only issue with it is that it will effect MUCH more than the spammer you are targetting. It will hit the entire net section he is using, if he is running through a public ISP you will also bring them down effecting everyone else who uses the ISP.
I know little of the economy/details of spamming, but it seems to me that spammers mass mail crap in the hopes that one person in a few thousand will respond to their pitch and/or take the bait. But if subject to return attacks, and they move on, wouldn't it make it much more difficult for that one scammed idiot to reply back? So if the spammer stays on the move, his actual customers can't get back to him, and, well, then he gets no business, and hopefully eventually finds something better or more lucrative to do. As far as taking down other people on a common network, if this started happening, wouldn't it be in the network provider's best interests to ensure that a few of their customers doing some spamming (on a spam rampage - or spampage?) don't invite retribution to take down others along with them? As such, providers would develop tools to ensure people don't send spam, and these would probably proliferate quickly and win the Nobel Peace Prize. But I hardly know any IT, so I may be way off base. All I know is that whatever happens, it will be bypassed and obsolete within a year, but you have to admit, the endless cycle of invention and creativity is a wonderful spectacle.