A question of ethics

[Lexxuk]

People who know me know that I detest with a vengance, Spam, I hate the stuff cluttering up my inbox like its something I'd like inviting me to buy prescription medication or to enlarge my penis, like as if I'd need either of them.. ok, maybe viagra could come in handy and your penis can never be too big but still.

Anyhow, I find myself now with an ethical debate, as you guessed I use Linux a bit now, but for a long time I've been using Apache/MySQL and PHP, I need more practice with it, but the main point there is Apache which is a web server!

Under Linux however, its a little bit more, it has a stress test programme called (scriptname), which is designed to stress test your apache installation, naturally.

So if I type in.. (as su/root)

(scriptname) -n 1000 -c 1000 http://localhost I get..


[root@localhost david]# (scriptname) -n 1000 -c 10000 http://localhost/
This is (scriptname), Version 2.0.40-dev <$Revision: 1.121.2.4 $> apache-2.0
Copyright (c) 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright (c) 1998-2002 The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking localhost (be patient)
socket: Too many open files (24)
[root@localhost david]# (scriptname) -n 1000 -c 1000 http://localhost/
This is (scriptname) Version 2.0.40-dev <$Revision: 1.121.2.4 $> apache-2.0
Copyright (c) 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright (c) 1998-2002 The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Benchmarking localhost (be patient)
Completed 100 requests
Completed 200 requests
Completed 300 requests
Completed 400 requests
Completed 500 requests
Completed 600 requests
Completed 700 requests
Completed 800 requests
Completed 900 requests
Finished 1000 requests


Server Software: Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/2.0.48
Server Hostname: localhost
Server Port: 80

Document Path: /
Document Length: 7034 bytes

Concurrency Level: 1000
Time taken for tests: 6.703514 seconds
Complete requests: 1000
Failed requests: 15
(Connect: 0, Length: 0, Exceptions: 15)
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 7765459 bytes
HTML transferred: 7463074 bytes
Requests per second: 149.18 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 6703.514 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 6.704 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 1131.20 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 127 819.2 0 6006
Processing: 44 835 974.8 503 3540
Waiting: -15 0 1.0 0 0
Total: 139 963 1220.3 505 6430

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 505
66% 535
75% 546
80% 561
90% 3384
95% 3417
98% 3540
99% 6307
100% 6430 (longest request)

Which means its hit my server with 1000 requests on my webserver, which being localhost means its very fast. Now the people who spend me Spam are the worst form of people I can imagine, trying to make money out of sending unsolicited email, and using false email addresses with the email on their site not working (obviously to prevent spam :rolleyes: ) so no way of telling them "FOAD".

Now they do this for money, and just money, if they send out 1,000,000 emails and 5 people actually respond they make a profit, email is free after all, thats why its so valuable to them.

Now, this programme ab, if I were to set up a little script, which ran:

(scriptname) -c 1000 -n 1000 http://spamsite/

and it did that for 9 hours solid, thats roughly (with 512k DSL, I'm getting 1MB soon) just over 2GB worth of pages transfered, which will incur costs on the spammer of course, and who knows, maybe take them over their monthly limit on transfers.

So the ethical dilemma, so I really use this programme to hit the websites of people that spam me, probably costing them money (whilst costing me nothing but electricity, I'm on an uncapped DSL) or should I just set up my email address to hit a blackhole (any email sent to that email address dies and is never delivered anywhere).

[Garg [RogueNET]]

do it man do it, cant stand all that bullshit im getting in my mail, PRESS THE BUTTON PRESS IT! :mad:

[Celt]

Hit them back.

They are breaking the law sending unsolicited spam, and it's mostly sent out of countries without internet laws, so they cant/wont do shit against you.

[sanityislost]

LoL nice, i love it....think you could make something that when people call me
there phone explodes?

SiL ..:..

[Lexxuk]

ok, 1000 at a time isnt possible (connection gets reset by peer, obviously to prevent this kind of thing, tried it on my own website though :p) 10 is possible though. 43630bytes in 5 seconds.

[Garg [RogueNET]]

still do it


EDIT: wonder how many i could send with my 10mb.. :o

[Lexxuk]

I was reading somewhere about a group of people that got pissed off with the Nigerian 409 scams, so what they all did is grouped together and went to the websites of the scammers and kept on downloading an image off their website, so imagine 1,000 people downloading a large image constantly, the bandwith would be massive and cost the scammers a fortune, something like this for spam emails would be poetic justice... wonder if I can get this programme to download a large image... :angel:

[Garg [RogueNET]]

if u can tell me how to do it and ill do it aswell

[rob444]

The best thing you can do is to contact the domain administrator, which I did. The site which I wont even mention sent subscription emails to my hotmail inbox, each mail was like 35~kb and regular hotmail accounts only have 2mb space so it will be filled pretty quickly. They had unsubscribe button in the email and I must say I unsubscribed over 7 times and each time it said I would be removed from their database within 48 hours. Anyway, I contacted different emails to that domain and no one answered, time passed and they continued sending these irritating spam messages and then I contacted their domain administrator which was on another domain and I emailed him about it, about what one of his sponsored domain had done to me and I must say it worked good. No spam messages anymore (so far). You should try it :)

[shodanjr_gr]

Wouldnt doing that be something like doing a denial of service attack? I think that the basis of a DOS attack is flooding the server with requests so that it will be unable to serve people that actually NEED it. Of course i might be totally wrong and since i hate spammers, i say go ahead and do it...

[Garg [RogueNET]]

invent this for tradechannel lexxy :p

[Marx]

You hate spam, yet you're a spammer?

Are you trying to infer something about the duality of man? eh? eh?

[Celt]

You hate spam, yet you're a spammer?

Are you trying to infer something about the duality of man? eh? eh?Should look up the definition of spam first.

[steweygrrr]

lexxy.....reckon they think about morality before they explode your inbox? Karma man....DO IT!

[Marx]

Should look up the definition of spam first.A trademark used for a canned meat product consisting primarily of chopped pork pressed into a loaf.

:wtf:

Spam refers to the mass mailing of e-mail, generally of advertising material. It is also used frequently to denote someone who posts large amounts of responses, most of which aren't pertinent to the particular thread they posted in.

So where's the issue?

[Celt]

A trademark used for a canned meat product consisting primarily of chopped pork pressed into a loaf.

:wtf:

Spam refers to the mass mailing of e-mail, generally of advertising material. It is also used frequently to denote someone who posts large amounts of responses, most of which aren't pertinent to the particular thread they posted in.

So where's the issue?Good boy.

So how is lexx spamming?

[Marx]

Good boy.

So how is lexx spamming?
Do some research, you'll see.

[Juht]

Don't touch this stuff... More than likely you'll make a mistake and end up hitting an innocent domain, because more often than not, other domains are just relays for spammers -- because a lot of sys-admins don't know how to turn off relays.

If you were to hit an innocent target and they called for an investigation in which you were eventually caught, you will be just as guilty as the spammers.

The ONLY safe way to handle these things is to collect evidence and let professional agencies handle the justice part. Vigilante tactics very rarely work out for the best.

[Celt]

Do some research, you'll see.I think you'll find taking threads off topic with flippant/pointless replies is far removed from making millions sending unsolicited e-mails to tens of millions of addresses.

[Marx]

I think you'll find taking threads off topic with flippant/pointless replies is far removed from making millions sending unsolicited e-mails to tens of millions of addresses.
Well excuse me for not taking the internet seriously.

[Agent L]

hmm, I'd suggest teaming up with some other folks and coordinate your attack.
REVENGE !

[Richard Slade]

You hate spam, yet you're a spammer?

Are you trying to infer something about the duality of man? eh? eh?

Dude.. Your definition of spam is not accounted for on the subject Lexxuk has brought up...
Yes, Lexxuk has had his roundabouts with the spammage on the forum
But this isn't a question about this in any way,
so WHY THE HELL are you bringing that up?

[Lexxuk]

my new router just died so pfft, i gotta use a crappy usb adsl thing till i can figure out whats up with the damn thing :(

[Richard Slade]

my new router just died so pfft, i gotta use a crappy usb adsl thing till i can figure out whats up with the damn thing :(
Trying plugging it into those holes in the wall...

[Lexxuk]

Trying plugging it into those holes in the wall...

i tried that i even took it downstairs n plugged it into another socket, no synch, and i cant connect to it now over the network (its ip would be 192.168.1.1) nor can I get dchp to work on it, the reset button on the back does nothing and its buggered up, so i'm going to cry into my milk :( :( :(

[Richard Slade]

i tried that i even took it downstairs n plugged it into another socket, no synch, and i cant connect to it now over the network (its ip would be 192.168.1.1) nor can I get dchp to work on it, the reset button on the back does nothing and its buggered up, so i'm going to cry into my milk :( :( :(
Armi should know what to do
he always fixes mine up
however, he ain't here :p
(Vampire_Reaver)

[Lexxuk]

i've tried everythin, its unplugged cooling off at the moment, maybe that will fix it O_o

[Vampire222]

theyll prolly get your ass busted for "dos" ing

[Spermy]

No, violent impact ussually clears it right up, but you have to use a precision tool, like a sledgehammer.

[QuantumDelta]

theyll prolly get your ass busted for "dos" ing
Unless it causes a specific amount(or higher) of financial damage to a company, you can't actually be reported in a serious light.

Since their activities are illegal they're not likely to report being DoSed or DDoSed either.


Technically, he could get away with it.

However, it would make him just as bad as them.

--
Although, Marx does have a point :p

[Vampire222]

Unless it causes a specific amount(or higher) of financial damage to a company, you can't actually be reported in a serious light.

Since their activities are illegal they're not likely to report being DoSed or DDoSed either.


Technically, he could get away with it.

However, it would make him just as bad as them.

--
Although, Marx does have a point :p

ya, best thing to do is find out who hosts their servers, and make them take the piss :D

[reddog]

Unless it causes a specific amount(or higher) of financial damage to a company, you can't actually be reported in a serious light.

Since their activities are illegal they're not likely to report being DoSed or DDoSed either.


Technically, he could get away with it.

However, it would make him just as bad as them.

--
Although, Marx does have a point :p
True to a certain extent. I you hit their website, if hosted by a third, it causes you to create more than reasonable traffic. Then it wont be the site that will report you but the hosting company that will talk to your isp and then you might consider changing isp. Tho the website might loose theirs aswell when they find out why it happend