>>>>> "Peter" == Peter Palfrader <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Peter> Is there something like hashcash that actually works? Peter> I mean something that stops Bob with his dozen of Athlon 2Ghz Peter> boxen at work from DoSing a service while still allowing Alice Peter> with her 486 to use the service? - If a spammer wants to add a valid hashcash token to each message, he will be able to send a far smaller number of spams than without the token. Spammers rely on being able to send out millions of messages cheaply. - The hashcash system does make certain assumptions about spammers. For example, that the spammers are using their own machines to send the spam. I suppose it does not work as well against people who use zombied Windows machines to send spam, although it would probably still limit somewhat the number of messages they can send. But I think it is still better than nothing. - Ideally (although I don't know if any program actually does this), the hashcash token is generated while the user writes the message. The token is generated within a small number of seconds, which is shorter than the time that it takes to write a meaningful message. So other than the "forwarded-junk-message-to-all-my-friends" message, Alice shouldn't notice. (Again, this is the ideal situation. I don't know of any MUA that actually does this. But this is independent of the actual hashcash program.) -- Hubert Chan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/ PGP/GnuPG key: 1024D/124B61FA Fingerprint: 96C5 012F 5F74 A5F7 1FF7 5291 AF29 C719 124B 61FA Key available at wwwkeys.pgp.net. Encrypted e-mail preferred.
