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Re: Is this the first case of a Distributed Denial of Physical Service?



This isn't the first use of the internet to attempt a Denial of Service style attack on something in the physical world. In late 2002, people from http://slashdot.org teamed together and executed a postal-service-DoS on a spammer. After obtaining his physical address, they signed him up for thousands of free catalog mailings and the like. More details, including a link to a paper written about how such attacks could be executed automatically here:
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/04/15/2027225.shtml?tid=111&tid=172

tonyl@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Hi,



Please see:



http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34388.html

http://www.cambs.police.uk/camops/press_releases/press_releases.asp?ID=1992



It appears that an individual has successfully socially engineered a 
distributed denial of physical service (DDoPS?).



A (hoax) email had been sent out to individuals informing them of their latest 
purchase and that their credit card had been charged accordingly.



As the individuals had not ordered iPods at £399.95, they were socially 
engineered into calling the customer service line given in the email.



This telephone number happened to be for the UK's Cambridgeshire Constabulary 
(police) Main Switchboard.



At the peak of this DDoPS, the switchboard was receiving 500 calls an hour, 
effectively denying the usual use of this telephone service.



It appears that a whole range of "systems" and processes may be vulnerable to 
this type of attack and raises some interesting points to consider...



Kind regards,



Tony Langley

Systems Architect

S2S Limited