Spamming and mailbombing

A technique widely used by hackers, mailbombing aims to saturate users’ mailboxes. Victims of this attack risk spending a lot of time processing their e-mails and losing valuable data.

Spamming causes a number of setbacks for targeted users: loss of time in processing emails, increased connection time, risk of running malware, loss of data, and so on. In France, spamming is prohibited by law. Spammers face criminal sanctions, fines and even closure of their Internet account if caught.

Mailbombing is the practice of sending tons of e-mails to a single recipient. The messages sent won’t matter. It’s even possible that there will be no content at all, or on the contrary that it will be accompanied by a heavy file. The hacker’s aim is simply to saturate the user’s e-mail inbox.

The aim of mailbombing is to harm a particular user. The latter risks not only suffering a denial-of-service attack, but also losing important data. Once the mailbox’s storage capacity has been reached, future e-mails will be lost and irretrievable for lack of storage capacity. Like spamming, mailbombing is also punishable by criminal penalties and damages.

The presence of several similar e-mails in their mailboxes should attract users’ attention and point them in the direction of mailbombing. Large messages may take a long time to download.

To circumvent mailbombing, users will need to set their email software to allow only emails of a certain size into their inbox. It is also possible to check incoming e-mails via the server, eliminate spam and anticipate mailbombing before downloading legitimate mail to the inbox. Installing effective anti-spam software is still the simplest and most effective way to prevent unwanted mail from reaching your inbox. Immediate removal of spam will protect users from cyber-attacks.