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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spike of "reply all" messages on an email distribution list
This article is about spikes of "reply all" messages on an email distribution list. For denial-of-service attacks, see email bomb.
This article may contain original research . Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (August 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
This article may contain excessive or irrelevant examples . Please help improve it by removing less pertinent examples and elaborating on existing ones. (December 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
An email storm (also called a reply all storm , sometimes reply allpocalypse , or more generally a notification storm ) is a sudden spike of "reply all" messages on an email distribution list, usually caused by a controversial or misdirected message. Such storms can start when even one member of the distribution list replies to the entire list at the same time in response to an instigating message. When other members respond, pleading for the cessation of messages, asking to be removed from the list, or adding vitriol to the discussion this triggers a chain reaction of email messages. The sheer load of traffic generated by these storms can render the email servers inoperative, similar to a distributed denial-of-service attack.
Some email viruses also have the capacity to create email storms by sending copies of themselves to an infected user's contacts, including distribution lists, infecting the contacts in turn.
Examples<br>[edit]
On 31 March 1987, Jordan Hubbard, using rwall, intended to message every machine at UC Berkeley, but the message was sent to every machine on the Internet listed in /etc/hosts. This message was not an email.[1]
On 14 October 1997, a Microsoft employee noticed that they were on the as-yet unknown email distribution list "Bedlam DL3" and emailed the list asking to be removed. This list contained approximately a quarter of the company's employees, 13,000 email addresses. Other users replied to the list with similar requests and some with requests to stop replying to the list. A Microsoft employee estimates that 15 million emails were sent, using 195 GB of traffic.[2]
On 3 October 2007, an email storm was generated at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, causing more than 2.2 million messages to be sent and exposing the names of hundreds of security professionals.[3]
In early 2009, U.S. State Department employees were warned they could face disciplinary action for taking part in a massive email storm that "nearly knocked out one of the State Department's main electronic communications systems".[4]
In November 2012, New York University experienced a reply-all email storm with 39,979 subscribed addresses affected due to an older listserv-based mailing list.[5]
On 18 September 2013,[6] a Cisco employee sent an email to a "sep_training1" mailing list containing 23,570 members requesting that an online training be performed. The resulting storm of more than four million reply emails, many of which were requests to unsubscribe and facepalm images, generated over 375 GB of network traffic and an estimated $600,000 of lost productivity. The following month on 23 October 2013,[7] a nearly identical email storm occurred when an employee sent a message to a Cisco group containing 34,562 members. The thread was flooded with "remove me from the list", "me too", "please don't reply-all", and even a pizza recipe.
On 24 January 2014, BP experienced an email storm that eventually took down the mail servers, when an employee sent an inquiry to the whole "OMS Navigator Users" distribution list consisting of many hundreds of people[8][9].
On 8 October 2014, an email storm of over 3,000 messages, including both spam and student comments, reached University College London's 26,000 students. Dubbed "Bellogate", the email chain was started by a prank email sent from an anonymous user pretending to be the provost.[10]
On 26 August 2015, Thomson Reuters, a media and information firm, experienced a "reply all" email storm reaching out to over 33,000 employees.[11] Seven hours later, the original email resulted in nearly 23 million emails. The storm was initiated by an employee located in the Philippines requesting his phone to be re-activated. Employees from all over the globe took to social media trending the hashtag #ReutersReplyAllGate.
On 2 October 2015, Atos, a European IT services corporation, experienced a "reply all" email storm. In about one hour, 379 emails were sent to an email distribution list with 91,053 employees, leading to more than 34.5 million emails. The storm was initiated by an employee located in India,...