Spam torments Sofast Communications services

After the problems Sofast Communications experienced last week, the timing of a completely unrelated problem Monday could not have been worse.

According to Chief Technology Officer Mike Kazmier, Sofast received tens of thousands of spam messages, mostly pornography, at about 10 a.m. Monday. The spam jammed the system and prevented legitimate messages from reaching their destinations, he said.

"It’s happened a couple of times in the past, but this is the worst we’ve ever had," Kazmier said of the spam attack. "No e-mail has been lost, it’s all queued for delivery, and our servers are processing it as fast as they can."

Kazmier said he expects it to take between 24 and 28 hours for the spam to clear, so messages should reach mailboxes sometime after 10 a.m. Tuesday.

He said the company cannot do a massive delete of the junk messages because legitimate mail would be lost.

Sofast is in the process of adding a special filtering system that will help prevent such attacks in the future. That filter may be up and running by the end of February, he said.

As for last week’s disruption of service to about 10 percent of Sofast Communication’s high-speed Internet connection customers, the official cause hasn’t been pinned down, but it appears outside interference was the culprit.

Sofast provides high-speed, wireless connections by way of licensed radio frequencies. The problem occurred when another signal broadcast within Sofast’s frequency.

Sofast has about 2,500 accounts, but some of those are dial-up connections that use telephone lines.

"Right now, we are convinced the problem came from outside interference, but we don’t know from where," said company owner Gordon McManus.

Wireless customers have backup dial-up connections, McManus said, so e-mail can be accessed if the wireless equipment goes down. But some customers were unaware of the backup.

The dial-up connection is slower, so it isn’t useful for customers, including the city of Great Falls, who e-mail large files, he said.

Most of the affected accounts were shut down Wednesday while some equipment was replaced. Some accounts also were off-line Thursday when Sofast employees did some rewiring.

"Normally, we only shut down for equipment work at 2 a.m.," McManus said.

Personnel were calling the last of the customers with interruptions on Monday

"Some people thought they were down longer than they actually were because modems needed to be unplugged, then plugged back in, like rebooting a computer," McManus said.

Most of the problems occurred with accounts with more than 10 users and those with networked systems.

Last week’s glitch was the most widespread in Sofast’s three-year history, he said.

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