T 5.76 Mail bombs

Mail bombs are e-mails containing functions intended to disrupt IT systems. Functions like this are usually integrated into e-mail attachments. On being opened for the purpose of reading, such an attachment generates countless subdirectories or occupies a lot of hard disk space, for example. In many cases, the selective overloading of e-mail addresses by messages with usually unintelligible contents is also termed mail bombing (refer to T 5.75 Overload due to incoming e-mails).

© Copyright by Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik 2000

Last Update on 6 April 2000