The email floodgates have finally closed and the stream of bounce messages has dribbled to a slow trickle. 36 hours after the initial email, my mail server has finally gotten a breather. The damage? 3500 bounced emails for around 5000 invalid email addresses. Update: Completely incorrect…I just stopped getting bounces. Checking the logfiles reveals 390,000+ invalid addresses.
I’m not really sure what pisses me off more…the fact that Robert forged my mail servers to send spam or the fact that Robert forged my servers to send spam. Let me elaborate…
Ever since I got the first Dimensional Warp Generator email a few years ago, I’ve thought that the author was pretty cool. A few fries short of a Happy Meal, but cool. I guess you could say that I was a fan…so much so that I actually started reporting on the Dimensional Warp Generator.
But now I feel almost betrayed by Robert. He forged my domain to send out spam for anti-spam software. He subjected me to thousands of bounced email messages. He subjected me to hundreds of actual people sending me email flaming me and calling me an asshole because they assumed that I was the actual sender. He subjected me to a low scale denial of service attack as someone tried (and failed) to take my servers offline.
And he’s not returning my calls or emails.
The result of Robert’s actions don’t really bother me. My servers are stable. I’m thick-skinned and flames roll right off. My mail filters took care of the bounces and saved each and every one of them into an evidence folder. My logfiles were backed up and, again, moved to an forensics quarantine (both for Robert and whoever DOSed me).
But it still bothers me that Robert chose my domain. Feh.