Seed Spambots 1.02 review

Seed Spambots generates HTML pages and email addresses for spambots, sending them to a honeypot SMTP server which reports checksum da

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Stephen Misel

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Seed Spambots generates HTML pages and email addresses for spambots, sending them to a honeypot SMTP server which reports checksum data to various learinghouses and gathers other spam statistics. The other spambot feeders simply invent fake domains and email addresses, which is of limited use since most spammers verify their lists prior to using them.

1. Place the firstnames file somewhere. Make sure your web server has read access to them.
2. Edit the index.cgi, paying particular attention to:
a. Your logfile location. If you don't want a logfile, set $config{'logfile') to "". Otherwise make sure the path to the logfile is a location your webserver can create/modify files in. For initial testing, either use the default (/tmp/spam.log) or null.

b. The domain names to use. You can specify a domain name or have the CGI figure out the domain from your CGI environment (HTTP_HOST, part of HTTP/1.1). The standard code uses one of my honeypot domains. Feel free to leave this if you don't have a domain to dedicate to spam!

c. If you're planning to store the "firstnames" file in the same directory as the CGI, you won't need to change the $config{'firstnames'} variable. If the CGI and name file will be in separate locations, modify these to point to the proper path.

d. The page title is defined in $config{'title'}. It defaults to "Email Directory".
e. If your perl isn't located in /usr/bin, you'll probably need to change line 1.

3. Confirm the index.cgi program is executable. In UN*X, chmod 755 index.cgi does the job.
4. Point your browser to index.cgi file and confirm proper operation.
5. Link to the CGI with something like "Spam bots, click here!"

What's New in This Release:
Impending passage of (you) "CAN SPAM" has renewed some interest in this project, since it will make harvesting email addresses a federal offense when it takes effect on January 1st, 2004. This release adds more addresses with the harvester's IP address (reversed - spammers are so stupid they won't notice!) as well as the epoch time of the harvest. I removed some missed vestiges of "lastnames" left in 1.01 and cleaned up the INSTALL file. Those of you who have PHP may be interested in including "seedspambots.php" on some of your pages.