- Lycos may have pulled its Make Love not Spam' screensaver, but all is not lost.
William Keeley's home-grown SpamFryer Java app does pretty much the same thing.
Download a copy here, and we have a download here as well.
Just in case.
SpamFryer is a piece of cake, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphors.
Drag it onto your desktop, doubleclick the SpamFryer icon to open it, type in the spam-site url and number of times you want it visited, and away you go.
Keeley asks us to point out that SpamFryer is purely for education and entertainment and that he's not responsible for its use or misuse.
Fair enough ; p
"Many will question my ethics for writing this program," he told p2pnet. "So let me explain."
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
SpamFryer By William Keeley
SpamFryer is just a small hack that allows fed-up spam recipients to strike back at their tormenters.
I wrote it in the Java language because I want it to work with all platforms, and not just linux or Windows. My goal for this program is for it to be distributed as widely as possible.
This includes distribution via peer to peer networks. The jar file includes the source code and includes a digital signature so that people can verify that it's not a trojan program.
I've been involved with computers since the age of 12. I am now 36. I've seen the Net grow from its infancy to what it is today. I've run my own websites on computers I built and programmed, and I've dabbled in just about every area of computing.
The Net is a wonderful source of information, entertainment, and communication, but spammers, phishers, crackers, and others have now turn this wonderful tool into a minefield. The Net works so well because it allows for the free exchange of information with government interference.
When spam started showing up on the Net, I could write the abuse department of an ISP, and the problem was solved pretty quickly. If that didn't work, a carefully crafted ip packet (or few) would eliminate the problem. The point is, the Internet at that time was policed by (ethical) hackers. For the most part, we kept the bad guys at bay.
Within a few years, more and more people started getting on the Net. As the Net became more popular, criminals started taking advantage. The international, cross-border nature of the Net offers criminals havens in far flung jurisdictions.
What makes the Internet useful to people like us now makes it possible for criminals such as spammers to act with near impunity. Governments are now passing regulations that make are supposedly targeting criminals but in reality, they curtail our freedoms. If we depend on government regulations to govern the Internet, it'll no longer be a place of free exchange of information.
I believe we need to police ourselves.
Like I said, the Internet has become a minefield for the average user. Now that criminals pay programmers to write spam spewing trojans, bot-nets and such, we have more and more attacks.
It's no longer an option just to put our arms in front of our face and allow these bullies to continue to punch us. (This is what we do when we implement and tune filtering software.) We now have to start fighting back. In the past defensive means have given us some protections, but now there are too many of these bullies joining the fray. Why do they join in you ask. Simple, because they profit massively.
Like the schoolyard bully who takes the other kids' lunch money, these high tech bullies take our computers' resources, our inbox, our credit card numbers and such. If a kid complains about the schoolyard bully, a teacher most likely tells the kid to stay away from the bully, take a different route home, or maybe the teacher will give the bully a slap on the wrist. (This is like the form reply from the abuse department of an ISP.) The bully then takes it out on the kid reporting him. The same is true with the Internet. You have DDOS'es, Joe Jobs and such.
However, if you have 10 kids join together and fight the bully, the bully is going to think twice about steeling the kid's lunch money. He doesn't want to get hurt, and the same is true with spammers. A spammer has control of a large amount of bandwidth. No single person of ordinary means can take out a spammer's network. However, if 10% of spam victims have their computers repeatedly visit a spamvertised site, the spammer's bandwidth costs skyrocket. If it no longer becomes profitable, a spammer will quit spamming.
I'm one of the schoolkids who simply provided one tool to go after these internet bullies.
My first though was to post the program anonymously to different websites and newsgroups, but I figured that people would not trust the program because they would not know its origins.
So, I decided to post it to my website and when Lycos released its screensaver, I decided to go public myself.
Like I said above, I want people to copy this program and spread it everywhere so that if my website is shut down and or blocked, people will still be able to have access to SpamFryer.
I've also written a program that generates real looking but fake information (that passes validity tests) for posting to the order page of spamvertised sites. I haven't released it yet because I'm still checking on how this tool will affect credit card processing companies. I want people to use a tool that they think will be appropriate, even if it isn't my tool.
I hope enough hackers join in writing programs like my SpamFryer application so that there will be no profit in spam.
Some say tools like the one I've written will overload the Internet. If it does, then it'll force ISP's to take real measures against spammers such as blocking port 25 access to outside networks by default.
If this is done, spam spewing software will have a hard time communicating without being quickly traced.
AT&T Worldnet has done this. I have yet to receive a spam form a Worldnet customer. Other measures ISP's can take include encouraging the use of more secure operating systems such as Linux, MacOS, and BSD (Maybe by offering a small discount to these users).
Microsoft can and should redesign their operating system with security in mind. When the Internet community comes together and take proactive measure, it will make life extremely difficult for the criminals.
