Comments on: Anyone have a blue casket?

By: Michael Gracie

Michael Gracie — Sat, 20 May 2006 02:13:05 +0000

Quoted from above: “The best analogy I can think of is that it’d be like you dealing with a water main break in your basement by hooking a big hose up to the leaking joint and redirecting the water into your neighbor’s basement instead.”

this was not a broken water main, the analogy would be more like 1000+ ‘neighbors’, all of whom are blindly following ’someones’ instructions, placing their garden hoses to full your basement, then when you ran next door to your neighbor’s house to get the word out, those same 1000+ hoses all moved to full your next door neighbor’s basement.

where the ‘wrong’ is done here is by the person or persons directing this, NOT by the person being attacked.

By: ZabaX

ZabaX — Mon, 08 May 2006 09:11:00 +0000

Well. I agree with most of said so far, but let’s not forget 2 facts.
A Spammer knocked down the sites.
Blue Security used it’s legitimate right to keep it’s users informed (I agreee it was not in its better way.

By: Michael Gracie

Michael Gracie — Thu, 04 May 2006 20:07:51 +0000

Correct, Bart. I never intended to imply malice. But such action certainly isn’t a vote of technical competence for a technology company.

By: Bart Schaefer

Bart Schaefer — Thu, 04 May 2006 19:52:28 +0000

RE homeowner analogies: It’s more like rats than water. “I’ve been putting out birdseed, but it is attracting rats, which keep the birds away. I’ll move the birdseed over there, where the birds can still get it, until I’ve killed the rats.” I doubt there was any intent, malicious or otherwise, to send the rats elsewhere; just a failure to think through that the rats would follow the food.

By: Michael Gracie

Michael Gracie — Thu, 04 May 2006 18:59:48 +0000

Bart: A victim of faulty plumbing wouldn’t need malicious intent (i.e. let me flood THAT asshole neighbor’s basement). It could be “Uh, oh, my basement is already full - lets use the neighbor’s - they won’t mind.” Doesn’t make it any less harmful - it still lacks common sense, bordering on stupidity. My compliment of Levine’s analogy stands.

David: As for the concept being flawed, well I didn’t like the “in your face” aspects of the system from the beginning - less due to financial considerations, and more due to the naivete regarding the market. If you attack, head on, people who make big money while hiding in the shadows, you have to expect (and prepare for) retaliation at some point. There is a fine line between being an “anti” zealot hell bent on destruction of the enemy, and being a strategically and tactically sound initiative that can actually solve real world problems without mass third party casualties. It seems Blue Sec never understood how to make the jump to the latter.

By: David Hart

David Hart — Thu, 04 May 2006 18:18:19 +0000

As you know, Michael, this concept was flawed from the very beginning. A simple Captcha would seemingly eliminate BS’s ability to create havoc with forms.

Moreover, BS seems extraordinarily hyperbolic in their statements. I am extremely skeptical about the claims regarding the number of users or the amount of spam that they have actually stopped.

Furthermore, the economic model remains unexplained.

BTW, Eric Benhamou (the ultimate kiss of death) is on the Board of Directors.

By: Bart Schaefer

Bart Schaefer — Thu, 04 May 2006 18:06:11 +0000

I suspect that this is more a case of lack of forethought than of malice aforethought.

Blue probably just wanted to redirect web site visitors to an explanation of what was happening during the time their regular site was unreachable, and didn’t think through the consequences.

That still doesn’t speak all that well of them, but I don’t think Jason’s analogy is accurate.

(No, I’m not and never have been a Blue Frog user.)