What Is Tarpitting?

When you get spammed on your mailbox repeatedly, you can't keep blocking the mail no matter how hard you try. The problem persists. It is just tiresome and down right irritating. You now know how frustrating it can be to get such emails and messages. You can think of tarpitting as virtually slowing down those annoying spammers. It accomplishes this by delaying their requests or responses, which makes it more difficult for spammers to send unwanted messages to you or your network. Imagine a situation where there is much traffic on the internet. A tarpitting attack will slow down spam bots like a traffic jam will slow down autos. The aggravation drivers feel when they are stuck in traffic is comparable to that spammers think when targeted by tarpitting. They must wait for their messages or requests to be sent, which can be an extremely inconvenient experience. Tarpitting is often carried out at the network layer using software or hardware to delay incoming requests or responses. This is done to steal information. The time that passes during the delay might range from a few milliseconds to many seconds, depending on how aggressive you want to be. When used against bots designed to send a large number of requests in a short time, the tactic of tarpitting can be particularly successful. You can avoid those requests from overwhelming your network or server if you only slow down their rate of execution. It's the equivalent of installing roadblocks on the internet! However, just like any other method, tarpitting has some drawbacks. Malware is possible for malware to slow down valid requests as well, which may be frustrating for the users of your website. Therefore, it is essential to use tarpitting in a measured manner and with caution.