Filters Strike Back

Until now, antispam developers and their products have played defense only. But now, one activist wants spam filters to automatically launch attacks against suspected spammers’ sites to shut them down. Fearing that spammers are increasingly finding ways to slip their unwanted messages past the current generation of filtering technologies, activists are taking a second look at a proposal to use denial-of-service attacks in the fight against spam. Such attacks, which are illegal and can disrupt a company’s communications network by burying its servers in unnecessary requests, have traditionally been associated with pranksters who use viruses to distribute their attack software on thousands of computers. Under the proposal, which was initially published in August by antispam activist Paul Graham, the attacks would be launched automatically by the next generation