MarkGilchrist.com

After 19 years connected to the Internet and working in the industry, I have finally been Joe jobbed - and I don't like it one bit. A joe job is a spamming technique that sends out unsolicited e-mails using spoofed sender data. Early joe jobs aimed at tarnishing the reputation of the apparent sender or inducing the recipients to take action against him (Google e-mail spoofing), but they are now typically used by commercial spammers to conceal the true origin of their messages.

Joe jobs often intend to capitalize on general hatred for spam. They usually forge "from" addresses and email headers so that angry replies are directed to the victim. Some joe job attacks adopt deliberately inflammatory viewpoints, intending to deceive the recipient into believing they were sent by the victim. Joe job victims may lose website hosting or network connectivity due to complaints to their Internet service providers, and even face increased bandwidth costs (or server overload) due to increased website traffic. The victim may also find his or her email blacklisted by spam filters.

Unlike most email spam, the victim does not have to "fall for" or even receive the email in question; the perpetrator is using innocent third parties to fuel what essentially amounts to slander combined with a denial of service attack.

False headers are used by many viruses or spambots today, and are selected in a random or automated way, so it is possible for someone to be Joe Jobbed without any human intent or intervention.

Joe jobs usually look like normal spam, although they might also disguise themselves as other types of scams or even as legitimate (but misdirected) messages.

Joe jobbing (or "joeing") can take different forms, but most incidents involve either e-mail or Usenet. They are sometimes seen on instant messaging systems as well. In general, joe jobbing is seen only on messaging systems with weak or no sender authentication, or where most users will assume the purported sender to be the actual one.

If the joe-jobber is imitating a normal spam, it will simply advertise the victim's product, business or website. It may also claim that the victim is selling illegal or offensive items such as illegal drugs, automatic weapons or child pornography to increase the likelihood that the recipient will take action against the victim.

Some joe jobs are politically motivated, where the intended victim is usually a political candidate, party or organization. Such joe jobs generally espouse an inflammatory viewpoint not actually held by the victim, or present a deliberately distorted variation of an actual viewpoint. Large-scale joe jobs were staged on Usenet against the Ralph Nader campaign in 2000 and 2004. The second of these was unusual in employing multiple phases —the first a conventional political joe job, the second claiming to be a widely spammed and similarly inflammatory statement by the Nader campaign about the first.

When imitating a scam, such as a Nigerian scam, or phishing scheme, the e-mail will still feature links to the victim's website or include contact information. In these instances, the joe-jobber is hoping that the recipient will notice the e-mail is fake, but mistakenly think the victim is behind the "scam".

When imitating a legitimate e-mail, the joe job will usually pose as an order confirmation. These "confirmations" may ask for credit card information, in which event the attack differs from phishing only in intent, not methodology, or simply imply that the recipient has already bought something from the store (leading the recipient to fear his credit card has already been charged). Like the "normal spam" jobs, these e-mails will often mention illegal activities to incite the recipient to angry e-mails and legal threats.
Another joe-job variation is an e-mail claiming that the victim offers a "spam friendly" web host or e-mail server in the hope of further inciting action against the victim by anti-spam activists.

Now, for someone like me who has been completely able to avoid spam for almost 2 decades, the best case scenario is a massive influx of new spam. The worst-case scenario - well, you saw some examples above - is very costly and time-consuming and has the added stinkbomb of tarnishing my reputation.

And then there's the halo effect. Put literally, the Halo effect is a phenomena that occurs when the light from my halo shines a little light on you. A positive connotation is intended but I'm using the term in a negative way. Let's pretend for a moment, that we were dumb enough to serve our clients hosting needs from the same domainand on the same IP address as MarkGilchrist.com. Were that the case, (and I assure you it is not the case) the tarnishing of my reputation would extend to any individuals whose websites are served from the IP address associated with us. And we would all be busy scrambling to write letters to get us out of those black holes and stop the denial of service attacks.

In this case, my little Indian friend (yes I know where you are) utilized a Trojan on my dumb, PC using, friends computers to spread the bad word. So, from this day forth any idiot who tries to get me to help him with a Windows computer will indeed get my help, in the form of me throwing the damn Windoze computer out a window and sitting them down in front of a Mac, perhaps like the upcoming iPad or iTablet or whatever iName Apple is going to give their amazing new product when it launches tomorrow)

Thanks Windoze,
Sincerely,
Mark.

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