Re: [cobalt-users] the vietmedia dude

[Elmer Fuddpucker <elmer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 25 May 2001, shimi wrote:

} since the guy is "attacking" our mailboxes, something which is considered
} illegal ("unsolicited mail"), is it legal, after trying to contact the ISP
} and ignorance from their side, to "take down" that box, so it'll stop
} disturbing our life?

Hi Shimi,

	I'm not sure I follow. However, if my assumption that
someone is running like a Dictionary Attack on your server and, if
you have bandwidth to spare and don't have access to router or a
firewall with which you can block the attack, you might consider
adding a reject line to the servers /etc/mail/access file. Something
along the lines of:

	ERROR:"550 Your Message Here"

	This will result in a daemon message being send in response
to each of the attackers queries.

	We were hit hard about two years ago by a huge well-known
Internet consulting firm. Apparently their server was owned by a
spammer. Their "engineers" wouldn't believe me when I told them what
was happening. Worse yet, they wouldn't even investigate my claims.
I contacted their upstream and received a similar response. Having
no alturnative, I did what I explained above. Took about an hour
before they started calling me, but call they did shortly after
their mail server started choking and we did indeed manage to get
things worked out in short order :-)

	I then filed a suit in small claims court and received a
judgement against the consulting firm for 4 hours of my time at my
standard hourly rate - attack managment... While the consulting firm
has not paid, I'm quite happy with the outcome :-)

	Brent

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