Bobbear.co.uk "Joe Jobbed" (RIP)

A few days ago I wrote about an anti-scam website had apparently sent me unsolicited email asking for money.

Something didn't smell right. My hypothesis was that a scammer was actually behind the email - hoping to fool receivers into donating money to their own account. At the same time, they would be unleashing the wrath of anti-spammers towards the innocent anti-scam site owner.

When first visiting the site, I noticed it contained some potentially useful information on the storm worm. Hoping to incorporate the info into the latest revision of our spam eliminator, I tried to revisit the site today. To my surprise, the site was offline.

Since a little more research indicated that the anti-scam site was legitimate, I'll name it. The site was Bobbear.co.uk.

Bobbear.co.uk was the victim of a successful "Joe Job" attack.

A "Joe Job" spam attack is when a spammer sends email pretending to be someone else in hopes of tarnishing the reputation of the "mark." These attacks can result in overflowed inboxes and crashed web servers.

Hopefully, Bobbear hasn't totally given up, and will be back online once things cool off.

These kinds of incidents serve to remind us that spammers and scammers are truly scum. Anyone who takes a stand against them risks putting themselves in harm's way.

So far, junk email filter authors seem to have not come under direct attack often. This is probably due to the fact that we tend to remain low key; focusing on deleting spam as opposed to going after the senders. Those who run anti-spam blacklists have not faired as well, and have come under attack periodically.

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