IT Baseline Protection Manual - The Information Warfare Site

Threats Catalogue Deliberate Acts Remarks
____________________________________________________________________ .........................................
T 5.75 Overload due to incoming e-mails
An e-mail address can be blocked intentionally by being constantly sent large
e-mail files (possibly with unintelligible contents). This can happen, for
example, to users who have not observed Netiquette and thus made
themselves unpopular in news groups. Netiquette (network etiquette)
comprises rules of conduct which develop in the course of time among users
of the Internet, particularly newsgroups. These rules are meant to allow
efficient and satisfactory use of the Internet for everyone.
An intentionally high volume of traffic can overload the local mail system,
thus rendering it inoperable. This problem can become serious enough to
make the provider disconnect the user's organisation from the network.
A mail system can also be overloaded by employees engaged in the
forwarding of chain-letters. During a Christmas season in the mid-Eighties,
one such chain-letter campaign paralysed several IT systems worldwide. Users
received an e-mail with Christmas greetings including a bitmap, and were
requested to copy this mail and forward it to ten other users.
____________________________________________________________________ .........................................
IT-Baseline Protection Manual: Oktober 2000