“Stopping Smurf and Spam”
“The Internet has always been a strong self-policing entity.
ISPs, mail administrators and others have long collaborated in an
effort to combat misuse of the Internet and security issues. In
some cases, this self-policing has grown into full-blown web sites
dedicated to searching, reporting and publishing information about
Internet sites that are broken in some way. This approach has been
taken for two problems common to the Internet: Smurf Amplifier
Attacks and Third Party Mail Relay.”
“Some people do not like the idea that organizations like those
mentioned in this article are somehow self-appointed Internet
vigilantes. To be sure, the self-righteous tone that many Internet
technologists take in promoting their own view has made many
newsgroups an unpleasant experience. However, the bottom line is
that these sites are informational only, it is up to the
administrators within each organization to decide what to do with
this information. The Internet can be a very fragile entity without
some rules, and getting these rules implemented via a little peer
pressure as opposed to a lot of bureaucracy appeals to us.”