Win Some, Lose Some

This week, the good guys lost one.

This is a battle that few were aware of, mainly just the security experts. I only read about it in the news like everybody else.

Several months ago, an Israeli security firm, BlueSecurity, took overt action against the leading world spammers. The spammers, seriously threatened by the action, employed Russian criminals, who used the millions of botted computers in the world, and responded against BlueSecurity and its major customers. Today, BlueSecurity admitted defeat by the spammmers, and closed its doors.

The BlueSecurity website, which earlier today contained a brief statement of defeat, now does not even exist. A quote from the former website, provided by DSLR Forums Spammers Defeat Blue Security:

Over the past few months we were able to leverage the power of the Blue Community and convince top spammers responsible for sending over 25% of the world's spam to comply with our users' opt-out list. We were making real progress in eliminating spam from the lives of our users.

However, several leading spammers viewed this change as a strategic threat to their spam business. The week before last, these spammers launched a series of attacks against us, taking down hundreds of thousands of other websites via a massive Denial-of-Service attack and causing damage to ISPs, website owners and Internet users worldwide. They also began a relentless campaign of email intimidation against any members of the Blue Community.

After recovering from the attack, we determined that once we reactivated the Blue ommunity, spammers would resume their attacks. We cannot take the responsibility for n ever-escalating cyber war through our continued operations.

During the past few weeks, in some of the security forums discussions about this event, some security experts noted a substantial decrease in the spam level. BlueSecurity did make a difference, during their brief struggle. But it was a short lived difference.

Watch your mailboxes.