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Jonathan Yaniv
Black Frog, its Okopipi.
I really think we should set the facts straight with the reporters.
http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-6076617.html?part=rss&tag=6076617&subj=news
Black Frog leaps into fight against spam
By Greg Sandoval
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: May 24, 2006, 5:52 PM PDT
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Spammers beware--hostile amphibians are once again rising against you.
First there was Blue Frog, a community antispam effort that stopped
operating last week after Blue Security, the company that started the
project, came under a withering denial-of-service attack.
Out of the ashes comes Black Frog, part of a project that is apparently
willing to become a flag bearer in the fight against spam. The project,
dubbed Okopipi, is developing the Black Frog antispam software as an
open-source project, according to the group's wiki.
"This project aims to become a distributed replacement of antispam
software Blue Frog," the Okopipi wiki states. The project merges two
separate efforts--Okopipi and Black Frog--that arose after the demise
of Blue Frog.
Blue Security waged a sort of do-it-yourself spamming campaign against
the spammers. It said that more than 500,000 customers downloaded its
Blue Frog software, which automatically sent replies back to mass
e-mails. If all of these customers' systems responded, the spammers'
systems would be overwhelmed.
But the Web sites of Blue Security and some of the company's partners
were knocked out last month by a massive distributed denial-of-service
attack. In such an attack, scores of computers try to continuously log
onto Web sites, in an effort to overtax the servers.
Okopipi's battle plan is to avoid depending on a centralized server,
creating a target too big to be taken out by a single DOS attack.
"It will be based on a P2P network (the frognet)," according to a
posting on the wiki. "On failure to connect, it could still opt out
given e-mail addresses."
Participants will send reports of spam e-mails to Okopipi, which will
use "handlers," which include dedicated servers, to analyze it. To
avoid suffering the same fate as Blue Security, Okopipi's staff will
not disclose information about its servers.
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"Only the Okopipi administrators will know their locations," the group
said on its wiki. This should make a DOS attack "very difficult," it
said.
The Okopipi wiki said that the Black Frog software will set
participants' systems to automatically click the "opt-out" or
"unsubscribe" links contained within spam--sending a response to the
mailers. The software is still being developed.
Richi Jennings, an analyst at security research company Ferris, said
that Okopipi should be careful if it decides to fight fire with fire.
"The project should also take care not to cross the line from
legitimate spam complaints to attacking spammers using DDoS-like
techniques," Jennings wrote on a posting to Ferris' Web site.
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18 comments
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TalkBack
Law Suite For Spamers
lanker45
May 27, 2006, 11:15 AM PDT
Blue Frog Did Not Reply to Spam
IwannaBaPIRATE
May 26, 2006, 7:57 AM PDT
Viva la Frog!
Caged Anger
May 26, 2006, 6:09 AM PDT
Spam is fundamentaly wrong
jabbotts
May 25, 2006, 11:04 AM PDT
Hurrah for Black Frog!
Seaspray0
May 25, 2006, 6:47 AM PDT
I need black frog!
inachu
May 25, 2006, 3:26 AM PDT
Factual errors in this article
Tortanick
May 25, 2006, 3:02 AM PDT
I wonder how long...
techguy83
May 24, 2006, 7:49 PM PDT
Read more comments >
Spy der Mann
http://groups.google.com/group/okopipi-press/browse_frm/thread/f91734ade91cae81
Unit1911
started 20 threads so far and most are either repeats of old threads or
just plain wrong. I'm starting to think this guy is a spammer here to
screw us up. So far I've seen him ask for admin access to the
sourceforge page and Project admin status.