Gadgetopia

Cloaking Device Made for Spammers: Spam has essentially created several new businesses. There are the spammers themselves, who are making money. Then there are the anti-spam companies, which are the new darlings of Silcon Valley and getting all kinds of cash thrown at them. Now we have the anti-anti-spam companies — “spakers” for “spam hackers” — who provide services to get around anti-spam safeguards.

For $1,500 a month, this company in Poland will cloak the server you use to send spam.

“When asked on an online chat for a demonstration of the stealth hosting service, Tubul provided the address of a website selling generic Viagra and other drugs.

‘Try to find the real IP,’ he said ‘This host is in rackshack.net, the most antispam ISP.’

A traceroute to the site indicated that it was being hosted on a computer apparently using cable modem service from Comcast.

‘Fake,’ said Tubul.

Indeed, when a traceroute to the site was performed moments later, it appeared to be hosted on a computer with a DSL connection from Verizon.”

Other spackers are taking down spam blacklists. Another one just went under this week.

“A fourth anti-spam service has been killed off by malicious hackers as part of the ongoing war between spammers and those who seek to stop them. Bluebottle Systems Pty Ltd, an Australian spam-resistant email service, threw in the towel this week.”