by Julia Angwin
In August, my email was attacked. Hate groups overwhelmed my inbox
and the inboxes of two of my colleagues, and shut down ProPublica’s
email much of the day. (I wrote about this incident in a previous newsletter.)
This week I wrote about the low cost and high effectiveness of such attacks.
The assault on ProPublica — a type known as “email bombing” or
“subscription bombing” — exploited the proliferation of websites that
offer email sign-ups. The attacker uses an automated program — which
costs just $5 on online hacking forums — that enters the victim’s email
into every single sign-up form it can find. Then the victim’s inbox is
deluged with emails seeking to confirm the sign-up.
In other words, my story shows how harassers have found ways to
exploit yet another opening in web infrastructure. And despite its
limited sophistication, email bombing is extremely difficult to defend
against.
Click here for the full article.
Source: ProPublica
No comments:
Post a Comment