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		Attacks on Spamhaus
		Spamhaus is an anti-spam organization working on the frontline to stop spammers, so it's no surprize we are often subject to attacks by spammers, angry at us blocking their spam or terminating their illegal activities. Most spammers are sociopaths with little regard for the public or for laws, therefore such attacks invariably make use of the public and usually include hijacking computers and attempts to coerce thousands of internet users into amplifying the attack. The types of attack Spamhaus often sees include: Joe-Jobs: Spam "sent by Spamhaus" and other tricks A common practice of spammers is to send out spam which fraudulently pretends to be sent 'by' anti-spam organizations such as Spamhaus. Spammers hope that some internet users may fall for this and complain to the anti-spam organization. Luckily most Internet users are not as dumb as spammers think and usually see the paradox of an anti-spam organization 'spamming' them and realize the obvious: Only spammers send spam, therefore the spam was obviously sent by a spammer, obviously angry at Spamhaus blocking his spam activities. This practice is called a "Joe-Job" (presumably because the first victim was called Joe). Very few internet users are ever fooled by Joe-Jobs, but occasionally some naive person is (for an example of an Internet user fooled by a Joe-Job, see this article "Email Terrorists" by a sadly clue-resistant 'Richard Deadwood' who was obviously suckered by the Joe-Job spam he received.) Spamhaus is frequently subject to Joe-Job attacks by spammers. We have seen spam claiming to be sent "from" Spamhaus, spam containing 'endorsements' by Spamhaus, spam "approved by Spamhaus", and spam containing threats to Internet users or to network administrators that Spamhaus "will shut them down" if they don't carry out the instruction in the spam. If you have received spam claiming to be sent 'by' Spamhaus.org, or containing any link to Spamhaus.org, simply delete it (don't forward it to us, chances are we've seen it already). Note that Spamhaus only sends email from its own mail servers whose DNS hostnames verify both forward and reverse. See: Spamhaus targeted by child-porn email attack (ZDNett/silicon.com) See: Wikipedia: Joe-Job definition See: Thomas Cowles, the World Trade Centre disaster scam spam Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks Starting in 2003 an increasing amount of criminal spam gangs, mostly Russians and East-European gangs, have used large networks ("botnets") of virus or trojan-infected computers ("bots") to mount Distributed Denial Of Service ("DDoS") attacks on Spamhaus. To defend itself from such attacks Spamhaus has had to implement substantial anti-ddos measures. The document Virus and DDoS Attacks on Spamhaus details some of the many DDoS attacks on Spamhaus, including Virus attacks by a Russian gang going to the length of releasing viruses specifically written to DDoS Spamhaus.org.