BlueFrog is dead
recently handgestrickt netzwerk followed the fight "BlueFrog versus international spammers". there is a loser: BlueFrog. after ongoing serious DDoS-attacks BlueFrog gave up. the spammers used millions of trojan-horse-infected computers to attack the BlueFrog-server. if you have BlueFrog still installed, you can uninstall it. BlueFrog is dead! the only thing you can do is using the normal spam-filters and get rid of this crap like you always did!
if only one person of hundreds uses an offer in an e-mail-spam, becomes infected by a trojan-horse or is tricked by a phishing e-mail, the bad guys already succeeded. every day the bad guys find another person, that has no clues about e-mail-security. that's how they earn money!
some security-related companies around the world warn about internet-extortion. some bad guys threaten big internet services to attack their servers if they do not pay an amount of money. the bad guys do permanent DDoS-attacks to make the service unusable or hack some customers passwords and release them on the internet. most big companies pay the extortion money. a new international kind of crime is coming up. the problems are obvious:
1. they can operate from around the world. a lot of countries still have no rights covering these topics.
2. they have trojan-horse-infected computers around the world. so they also can use these computers. there is no way to detect them or write firewall-rules.
3. their work is highly effective. extorted companies pay high amounts of money. one succesfull phishing lets them earn the complete incomes of a person.
what can be done?
1. there must be an international rights system covering internet-related topics. no country of the world should house spam-servers or let bad guys spread trojan-horses. this will be the responsibility of worldwide politicians for the next decades.
2. people must be more sensitive for e-mail-content and better clarified about this topic and how to prevent infections.
3. service providers must take the topic "security" more serious and invest into secure systems. today many people, even companies still do not take this topic too serious. a lot of e-mails are send unencrypted, passwords are send over messengers and websites still do not use HTTPS for their login-forms.
4. virus- and trojan-horse-fighters must be supported! many companies that try to fight the malicious software depend on donations or payments. virus-definitions must be released regularily. this is cost-intensive work.
related:
Tagesschau-article ("thank you" to Stefan Schulz-Lauterbach/clickpress mediaagentur)
BlueFrog
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