The Australian Federal Police has arrested a woman for allegedly email bombing the office of a Federal Member of Parliament in Sydney. The woman is accused of sending over 32,000 emails to the MP’s office in just 24 hours, using multiple domains to continue the attack.
Email bombing is an online attack that involves overwhelming a recipient’s inbox or mail server by bombarding an email address with a large number of emails.
The exact means by which the woman carried out the attack is unclear, but it is suspected that she may have used an email bombing service that can send emails from different addresses, bypassing spam filters.
Another possibility is that she used scripts that automatically registered the MP’s email address with many websites, which then sent registration confirmations to the office.
The woman is to be charged with one count of committing unauthorized impairment of electronic communications, which carries a maximum imprisonment penalty of ten years.
The Australian Federal Police have emphasized the need for advanced filtering tools to block messages based on specific criteria such as keywords in the content, as blocking the email addresses or marking their messages as spam is not an effective defense method against this type of threat.
The incident highlights the growing threat of email bombing attacks, which can cause significant disruption and downtime for organizations.
It also underscores the need for increased awareness and education around email security, as well as the importance of implementing robust email filtering and security measures to protect against such attacks.
