Fatal System Error by Joseph Menn Page B
Authors: Joseph Menn
Tags: General, Social Science, Computers, Business & Economics, Law, Criminology, security, Viruses & Malware, Online Safety & Privacy, Computer & Internet
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gambling transactions that were running through Prolexic’s machines. “That’s really interesting,” Betancourt said. But he hadn’t been working gambling cases, and he didn’t seem focused on what Barrett was saying. Barrett guessed that the FBI already had a lot of this information and that Betancourt wasn’t allowed to tell him so.
In his high-rise condo in Florida, Barrett had been sketching out ideas for a new business he could start after making a break from Prolexic. A noncompete agreement in his employment contract meant that he couldn’t do denial-of-service jobs. But Prolexic had succeeded largely because it had both enormous amounts of bandwidth and clever techniques that Barrett and his crew used to maximize the efficiency of that bandwidth.
Barrett thought about what else would benefit from the fattest pipes and smart engineering and was also in a market destined to grow. Once he pondered it that way, the answer was obvious: Internet video. As an added bonus, that would keep him well clear of the bad guys. “It’s nice when people aren’t trying to destroy your network,” he told a friend. “And working in security makes you paranoid.” Barrett called around to his contacts until he had a pretty good idea how sites handled the demand for connectivity from millions of people watching their videos. It seemed awfully basic. So he started working out how it might be done for less money.
When Barrett knew he had something good, he got in touch with a venture capitalist who had come to check out Prolexic, Perry Wu. After a series of conversations, they co-founded a company called BitGravity. Instead of relying on investors that Barrett now knew they would have to research before trusting, Barrett and Wu decided to bootstrap the business by themselves. Barrett contacted some of the major Prolexic suppliers and told them that he had a new idea. If they could lend BitGravity some gear, it would pay them when it could. If the company got as big as Barrett thought, it would become a big customer. Normally that kind of pitch would get an entrepreneur nowhere. But the people Barrett called knew what he could do, because they’d seen it before. Barrett started off with $250,000 worth of equipment, for which he paid nothing upfront. Barrett and Rachelle moved back to Northern California. They settled in the Bay Area town of Pacifica, picking a condo with a view of the best surf break within half an hour of San Francisco.
Barrett’s departure could not have come at a worse time for Prolexic. The company was about to take on its most unusual client, an anti-spam firm based in Haifa, Israel, and in Silicon Valley’s Menlo Park, where venture capital firms had invested $4 million in it. Blue Security Inc. had a radical idea for stopping spam. Over the course of a year, it compiled a list of 450,000 email addresses of people who wanted to be protected. Blue Security then contacted major spammers, telling them to purge Blue Security’s clients from their target lists. If they refused, the security company warned, the free software on its clients’ machines would send “opt out” requests simultaneously to the spammers, in effect launching a vigilante denial-of-service attack on the mass-mailers. Impressively, many of the spammers complied, and some longtime spam foes hailed Blue Security as the culminating triumph of tech-savvy volunteerism that could save the Net from a host of ills.
Much remains murky about what followed, including exactly which spammers fought back. But Blue Security clearly had not thought everything through. For starters, it had assured clients that the email addresses they provided would be encrypted for their privacy. The idea was that spammers willing to purge their lists would have to submit their own roster to Blue Security for cleaning. But it was child’s play to do that and then compare the two lists, making it apparent which intended recipients were working with Blue
In his high-rise condo in Florida, Barrett had been sketching out ideas for a new business he could start after making a break from Prolexic. A noncompete agreement in his employment contract meant that he couldn’t do denial-of-service jobs. But Prolexic had succeeded largely because it had both enormous amounts of bandwidth and clever techniques that Barrett and his crew used to maximize the efficiency of that bandwidth.
Barrett thought about what else would benefit from the fattest pipes and smart engineering and was also in a market destined to grow. Once he pondered it that way, the answer was obvious: Internet video. As an added bonus, that would keep him well clear of the bad guys. “It’s nice when people aren’t trying to destroy your network,” he told a friend. “And working in security makes you paranoid.” Barrett called around to his contacts until he had a pretty good idea how sites handled the demand for connectivity from millions of people watching their videos. It seemed awfully basic. So he started working out how it might be done for less money.
When Barrett knew he had something good, he got in touch with a venture capitalist who had come to check out Prolexic, Perry Wu. After a series of conversations, they co-founded a company called BitGravity. Instead of relying on investors that Barrett now knew they would have to research before trusting, Barrett and Wu decided to bootstrap the business by themselves. Barrett contacted some of the major Prolexic suppliers and told them that he had a new idea. If they could lend BitGravity some gear, it would pay them when it could. If the company got as big as Barrett thought, it would become a big customer. Normally that kind of pitch would get an entrepreneur nowhere. But the people Barrett called knew what he could do, because they’d seen it before. Barrett started off with $250,000 worth of equipment, for which he paid nothing upfront. Barrett and Rachelle moved back to Northern California. They settled in the Bay Area town of Pacifica, picking a condo with a view of the best surf break within half an hour of San Francisco.
Barrett’s departure could not have come at a worse time for Prolexic. The company was about to take on its most unusual client, an anti-spam firm based in Haifa, Israel, and in Silicon Valley’s Menlo Park, where venture capital firms had invested $4 million in it. Blue Security Inc. had a radical idea for stopping spam. Over the course of a year, it compiled a list of 450,000 email addresses of people who wanted to be protected. Blue Security then contacted major spammers, telling them to purge Blue Security’s clients from their target lists. If they refused, the security company warned, the free software on its clients’ machines would send “opt out” requests simultaneously to the spammers, in effect launching a vigilante denial-of-service attack on the mass-mailers. Impressively, many of the spammers complied, and some longtime spam foes hailed Blue Security as the culminating triumph of tech-savvy volunteerism that could save the Net from a host of ills.
Much remains murky about what followed, including exactly which spammers fought back. But Blue Security clearly had not thought everything through. For starters, it had assured clients that the email addresses they provided would be encrypted for their privacy. The idea was that spammers willing to purge their lists would have to submit their own roster to Blue Security for cleaning. But it was child’s play to do that and then compare the two lists, making it apparent which intended recipients were working with Blue
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