Spammer Uses Green Bean’s WiFi

A rogue spammer illicitly worked to shut down the popular coffee shop - Green Bean's wireless Internet connection. It was on October 16, 2006 when somebody intentionally damaged the Green Bean's network connection by sending out millions of spam mails from the café. The Green Bean owner Pete Schroth lamented that there was always someone wanting to make chaos for other people.

Green Bean is one of a number of wireless "hot spots". These are enabled by WiFi, which allows computer users to intercept the Internet without wires. WiFi facilitates fast data transfer by a maximum of 11Mbs. It sends data through short-range 'radio signals' with the help of a singe router for several laptop connections. WiFi is becoming increasingly popular these days.

Spammers take advantage of loopholes in corporate wireless 'local area networks' (LANs) to transmit masse of unsolicited e-mails. When security in 'fixed line Internet connections' firm up, spammers look to exploit vulnerabilities in 'wireless LAN security'.

The ISP from which Green Bean avails its Internet access is most likely the agency that regulates the Internet. Green Bean rates a dollar a day for surfing, and shall possibly switch to 'time-delimited password system'.

The spam mails included junk e-mails that advertised products such as 'Viagra'. Many people find such messages irritating and clog Internet passages making their function inefficient.

Schroth said it was practically impossible to spot the culprit because such WiFi users remain anonymous, identified only by the wireless source locations from where they tap into the Web.

A more likely case than sending millions of spam mails over the WiFi network is tracking of a spam push being sent from that network. Dispatching millions of e-mails of sizes over 384 kbps to 768 kbps would take too long a time to get noticed.

The agency monitoring the Internet for spam briefly cut off Green Bean's wireless access this week following the spammer's mass mailing. The café owner might also install filtering software to limit outgoing e-mails. Although these would cause inconvenience to customers but they would serve a long run purpose of safe and unhindered web surfing.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 10/25/2006