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Email attacks irk ISPs and users
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Several New Zealand ISPs and a number of "high profile" net users have suffered at the hands of email attacks over the past few days.

In a statement yesterday, Clear announced that it had been victim of an email attack which saw it bombarded by more than one hundred thousand emails.

"There's no doubt this was a malicious attack aimed at denying service to our customers. Whoever did it tried to cover their tracks but we've got enough information to identify the source and we've passed that on to the Police" said Clear's operations manager Gordon King.

Clear claims that the attack, while slowing down the system for a while, caused no loss of user information or long-term damage to the ClearNet system.

Another high profile Net user was also mail-bombed by a naive user who attempted to subscribe their email address to over 1,000 different mailing lists.

Although it has not been confirmed at this time, it is believed that both attacks may have been perpetrated by the same individual operating from an IHUG account. IHUG administration have identified the account responsible for at least one of the attacks.

Clear and one other victim are laying complaints with the police, with another party planning to take civil action against the attacker to recover the not insignificant costs associated with tidying up the mess.

In another case of Net-spam, SineSurf are seeking a restraining order to prevent a habitual spammer from ever gaining another account with them.

The "ex" SineSurf user sent unsolicited commercial email to over 2500 IHUG subscribers and did so in such a manner that responses to the spam were also sent to the 2500 people on the list - further exacerbating the problem.

Related stories:

ISPs need to unite against spammers


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