Re: OT: Net traffic jams?

[Jon Longtin jlongtin@xxxxxxxx]

Patricia M. Godfrey wrote:
> Does anyone who keeps more au courant with things than I do know if
> the Net has been hit with some kind of problems lately? Return of the
> Blaster Worm? Widespread DDoSes? I ask because a couple of my posts
> took 2 or 3 days to get from here to the UPenn server and back to me,
> and Bob Ashley tells me he sent a couple of posts (replying to my
> requests for more information) that never get back to him (or to the
> rest of us, apparently) at all. And just now a post I had sent on
> Friday to Russ Urquhart, off list, about M$'s malfeasance (in response
> to one he had sent me, calling an online article to my attention)
> provoked an "undeliverable" message. That's AOL (Bob), Eskimo (moi),
> and Verizon (Russ), so it's not just one ISP having trouble.
I am seeing a 25:1 increase in non-filterable spam. Others have also
commented on this. As I understand it, they embed their message in an
image file with distorted text character images (pdf, peg, etc.) rather
than plain text or html.  Such files currently cannot be scanned for
spam. Additionally, there appear to be hidden robotic programs being
secretly installed on vulnerable computers which keep automatically
pucking this rancid offal onto the net day in and day out.

Jon