E-Mail Bombs

Posted on March 27, 2008
Filed Under Email Security |

It is one thing to send one or two messages to government policy makers or to a private company, even on a daily basis. But it is quite another to bombard them with thousands of messages at once, distributed with the aid of automated tools. The effect can be to completely jam a recipient’s incoming e-mail box, making it impossible for legitimate e-mail to get through. Thus, an e-mail bomb is also a form of virtual blockade. Although e-mail bombs are often used as a means of revenge or harassment, they have also been used to protest government policies.

In what some U.S. intelligence authorities characterized as the first known attack by terrorists against a country’s computer systems, ethnic Tamil guerrillas were said to have swamped Sri Lankan embassies with thousands of electronic mail messages. The messages read “We are the Internet Black Tigers and were doing this to disrupt your communications.”An offshoot of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which had been fighting for an independent homeland for minority Tamils, was credited with the 1998 incident. On that e-mail mission, they were successful. From that incident onwards black hats all over the world took e-mail bombs to their armory.

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