The Blue Frog Burps His Last?

By | May 17, 2006

Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent at The Guardian is reporting that Blue Security is killing off the Blue Frog, saying it “could no longer continue to operate in the face of an escalating threat to the internet from a malicious Russian spammer known only as PharmaMaster.” The Blug Frog had been under serious attack from PharmaMaster, knocking it and much of Canada off the air via Denial of Service attacks on its servers.

Eran Reshef, the founder of Blue, said his company, which recently drew $4.8m (£2.5m) in funding and counts several senior industry figures as directors, was simply unable to become trapped in a war against a criminal group. “This is something that’s really got to be left to governments to decide. To fight the spammers you really need to spend $100m.”

Reshef is quoted as saying “it’s a dirty little secret that there is no real way to totally prevent denial-of-service attacks – if the attacker is prepared to put enough money in, then they can beat you every time.”

A surprising conclusion, if true (Bobbie has checked around and says it is so.) Certainly I think Reshef is right that it’s up to governments to deal with this kind of thing; Blue Frog was good in principle, but its supporters began to sound more like vigilantes than a serious and kosher effort to combat spam.

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