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January 02, 2008

Ah, New Year's Eve. A time to reflect on the year just passed and dream of the year ahead...a time to perhaps get a little silly at having survived one more orbit around the Sun...a time to spam the crap out of one of my domains.

I knew I didn't get blitzed on the Eve, but I thought I was having the DTs when I saw my spam stats chart the next morning. On December 31, 2007, my dannyg.com domain had been dictionary-attacked more than 107,000 times! That's more than double the amount I ever recall seeing.

The pattern of these kinds of attacks varies (my earlier reports here, here, here, and here). This one was highly distributed, with each connection to my server attempting to drop but a single burning paper bag full of dog poo. The sources, presumably botnet computers sitting idle while their owners reveled with lampshades on their heads, were used a few times during the day for these singleton attempts.

I don't know what the spam content was—not that it matters. I'm just happy that someone spent money or something else of value to rent a botnet and got absolutely nowhere as far as my domain goes. My poor server, though, was probably smoking, and could have used a stiff drink at midnight.

Good health and happiness to loyal (non-spamming) Spam Wars Dispatches readers in 2008. To spammers and scammers, may 2008 be the year you take up butterfly collecting as a full-time hobby.