#$%^&* Russian Spammers!

[NashVegas]

Well, I assume they're Russian. We'll say "eastern bloc" to be more polite.

About two weeks ago, out of the blue, I received about 2k "bounce" emails (someone successfully spoofed my work addy). They were mostly from .ru postmaster accounts / domains. Then it was quiet for a little while, must've been a trial run. A week later they started up again and now I get about 1k to my inbox a day. Our tech guy has been working with our ISP and Postini and nothing is stopping it. Filters take out about 1/3-1/2 of it, but most goes through, I'm guessing because what's coming is from Postmaster accounts. 90% is from various .ru, the rest is a mix of Czech, Italian & French domains.

Is anyone else getting this?

[Greyskye]

1. Got hit by this a couple weeks ago as well

They spoofed an old work UNIX email account of mine that now gets bounced to my work Outlook email. What a freaking PITA that was. :eyes:

I didn't get 2k though, probably only about a 10th of that. Probably because we have very aggressive spam filters here at work. The deluge only lasted a couple days though - I haven't had any more of these for at least a week now. Good luck!

[NashVegas]

2. Even With Agressive Config

I'm still getting about 60 per hour that make it through to my inbox. They're going to config my account to filter all "non-deliverables."

Our IT guy has been speaking to NOC and I guess it's a huge nat'l issue right now.

100 E-mail Bouncebacks? You've Been Backscattered.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/145449/100_email_bouncebacks_youve_been_backscattered.html

At its worst the phenomenon can even wipe Internet servers off the map.

Last month, Stephen Gielda, president of Packetderm, upset a fraudster who was trying to use his anonymous Internet service. Soon his servers were inundated with a tidal wave of backscatter messages. At one point, he was being hit by 10,000 bounceback messages per second, enough to throttle the server's Internet connection.

Gielda had to take his site off-line for five days as he waited for the problem to abate. "I'm used to backscatter, but I'd never seen it at this level before," he said.

My guy always thinks stuff like this is done by security companies, looking to sell software.

[Greyskye]

3. Thanks for that link

Very informative - I hadn't heard the term 'backscatter' before. And it makes sense - my old UNIX email address is loose in the wild, thanks to old Usenet posts. :blush: