Have you ever suddenly started receiving thousands of emails just within a few days? However, none of these emails are productive – then you have just experienced an email bombing attack. Don’t worry. Read through these 5 things about email bombing, and you will be adept to prevent the next one:
What is an Email Bomb?
Email bombing is an old abusive technique in the internet world, which is carried out by sending a large number of emails to a specific email address with the objective of flooding the inbox.
What is the Intent behind Email Bombing?
The intention behind email bombing is to overwhelm the target’s mailbox so that its capacity is exhausted.
Based on the number of emails, the email bombing attack can be a prank or a form of denial of service attack. The denial of service attack is a cybercrime technique, in which a network resource’s services are temporarily blocked for the concerned user. Due to this if a person was to receive an important email, he or she will be prevented from doing so. Also, due to email flooding, the person may miss out on some really important emails that may lead to either financial loss or productive loss.
What are the different ways Email Bombing Attacks are being carried out?
Mass Mailing: Mass mailing is the sending of a large number of duplicates of the same email to a specific email address. This type of email bombing attack is very cheap and easy to carry out and due to its simplicity, it is easily detectable by automatic incoming messages processor and spam filters. Email bombing using mass mailing is usually carried out as a direct denial of service attack with the use of botnets. Botnets are a number of devices that are connected via the internet that perform automated tasks that are repetitive in nature. Due to emails arriving through multiple source addresses, it becomes difficult for spam filters to prevent the attack.
List Linking: List linking, also known as email cluster bombing is the technique in which a person is required to sign up to a particular email address several email list subscriptions and newsletters. Email bombing using list linking can be easily carried out with the use of simple scripts. This method is difficult to trace back to the source and the outcome can be quite devastating. However, the user can manually unsubscribe in order to stop receiving further emails. As a means of prevention from this kind of bombing attack, most of the email subscription services use confirmation emails when a person registers for a subscription. However, these confirmation emails can also play a part in these attacks.
Zip Bombing: A zip bomb is a malicious data file which is used to wreck the device of the receiver. The intention is to deactivate the antivirus software used to protect the device from malware so that different types of viruses can enter the receiver’s device. However, most modern antivirus software can identify a zip file and prevent it from causing havoc.
What are the protective measures against Email Bombing?
- Antivirus software and firewall can be used to effectively reduce the probability of the attack. A firewall forms a barrier between the internal network and malicious external network. Email filter applications can also be used to filter the emails based on the source address. There are many email filter applications available for both Mac OS and Windows.
- Use of Proxy servers is an efficient method for protection against email bombing. A proxy server is a computer device to which all other computers in a particular network are connected. It has certain rules for filtering unwanted messages and requests from untrustworthy IP addresses before they can crash the receiver’s device.
- Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) can be used to prevent a device from email bombing. On connecting to the SMTP, the mail transfer agent surveys the mail and if the IP address is found to be suspicious, the mail is rejected.
What to do if you get Email-Bombed?
If you become a prey of email bombing, safely lock down all your accounts. If the attacker gains access to your bank account, then he may use email bombing to hide the confirmation emails for the various transactions.
Next, check all your online shopping accounts for any recent orders. The shopping website’s customer care should be notified immediately in case there are any recent orders which are not placed by you. Also, remove all your saved payment options so that the attacker cannot further access your account by any means. After securing all your accounts you must try to fix your email by using some spam filters or antivirus software. Lastly, if you can’t stop the attack, you have to bear it until the attacker stops.
The Bottom line
The age-old paraphrase that says ‘Prevention is better than cure’ holds true even today. Follow it to the T, in all aspects of your life – physical or digital – and you will never have to face the fatal consequences of a crisis.