An inbox full of unwanted messages sounds like ordinary spam until hundreds of emails and text messages begin arriving within a short period. At that point, the problem is not just annoying marketing. It may be an email and SMS bombing attack.
The original article describes this kind of experience and connects it with FloodCRM, a service discussed in the context of sending large volumes of messages. What caught my attention was not simply the number of notifications involved. It was the way an attacker can turn normal communication systems into a source of confusion.
As an IT student, I usually think about security in terms of access controls, vulnerable software, network traffic, and malware. Message bombing is a useful reminder that attackers can also target a person’s attention. If enough noise is created, an important warning can disappear inside it.
How message bombing works
An email bombing attack floods a specific address with messages. SMS bombing applies the same idea to a phone number. Depending on the method, the messages may come from one system or from many unrelated services.
An attacker can automate newsletter registrations, contact forms, account verification requests, password reset pages, and other public forms. Each service may send only one legitimate message, but automation can trigger a large number of them.
This makes the attack difficult to filter. Traditional spam campaigns often reuse the same sending domains, content, or infrastructure. A bombing campaign may produce messages from real companies using properly configured mail servers. Every individual message can look legitimate even though the overall pattern is abusive.
The same distinction matters for SMS. A one time passcode from a real service is not necessarily a fake message. However, receiving many unexpected codes can indicate that someone is repeatedly entering your number, testing account recovery flows, or deliberately generating traffic.
It is also important not to jump directly from correlation to attribution. A personal account of an attack can document what the victim observed, but it does not automatically prove who operated the campaign or which platform handled every message. The appearance of a company’s name in an email does not mean that company organized the attack. Its public form may simply have been abused.
The original post’s discussion of FloodCRM raises a broader issue about high volume messaging tools. Features that automate email or SMS delivery can have legitimate uses in marketing, customer communication, and authorized testing. The same capabilities become abusive when someone points them at a person who did not consent. The product category matters less than authorization, safeguards, and how the tool is actually used.
The real alert may be hidden in the noise
The most interesting part of this attack is its potential purpose.
Sometimes the objective is harassment or disruption. A constant stream of notifications can make a phone difficult to use and an inbox unpleasant to open. It can also consume the victim’s time as they try to unsubscribe, block senders, and determine what happened.
In other cases, the flood may be camouflage. An attacker who has accessed an online store, financial account, or email account may want to hide a real security notification among hundreds of unrelated messages. A purchase receipt, password change notice, login warning, or account recovery email becomes much easier to miss.
This is why deleting everything immediately can be a mistake. The flood itself does not prove that another account has been compromised, but it should prompt a careful review.
I would search for messages related to:
- Password changes and account recovery
- New device or login notifications
- Purchases, refunds, and shipping confirmations
- Payment services and financial accounts
- Changes to an email address or phone number
- Multifactor authentication codes
- New forwarding rules or security settings
Any account mentioned in a suspicious message should be checked through its official application or a trusted bookmark. Clicking links inside the flood is risky because phishing messages can be mixed into the traffic.
A practical response
The first step is to preserve useful evidence. Screenshots, timestamps, sender details, and complete email headers can help identify patterns. If the attack continues, documenting the rate and duration may also be useful when contacting an email provider, mobile carrier, employer, or law enforcement agency.
Next, the email account itself should be reviewed. A victim should check active sessions, recovery methods, connected applications, forwarding addresses, and inbox rules. Attackers sometimes create filters that automatically hide security messages. A unique password and strong multifactor authentication are essential. An authenticator application, passkey, or hardware security key is generally safer than relying only on SMS.
Financial and shopping accounts deserve immediate attention. It is better to inspect transaction histories directly instead of trusting the visible inbox. If unauthorized activity is found, the relevant provider should be contacted using its official support channel.
For the phone number, the mobile carrier may offer spam controls or additional account protections. A carrier account PIN or number transfer lock can reduce the risk of unauthorized number porting. These options vary by provider, but they are worth checking.
Inbox filters can make the situation manageable, although they should be created carefully. Moving obvious registration and newsletter messages into a separate folder is safer than deleting all recent mail. Important alerts can then be reviewed without losing evidence.
Service operators also have a role here. Public forms should include sensible rate limits, automated abuse detection, confirmation steps, and limits on repeated requests to the same destination. CAPTCHA can help, but it should not be treated as a complete solution. Monitoring sudden spikes in outbound email or SMS traffic is equally important because message bombing can create costs and damage a sender’s reputation.
Why this attack deserves attention
Email and SMS bombing sits in an uncomfortable area between spam, denial of service, and social engineering. It may not exploit a sophisticated software vulnerability, but it exploits a weakness in the way people process alerts.
Security systems depend on users noticing unusual activity. If attackers can overwhelm that attention, even a correctly delivered warning may become useless.
That is what I found most valuable about the original article. It highlights a type of attack that can look harmless at first but deserves a calm and structured response. The right question is not only, “How do I stop these messages?” It is also, “What might someone be trying to prevent me from seeing?”
Original source: https://dev.to/floodcrmorg/i-was-hit-by-an-email-and-sms-bombing-attack-what-i-learned-about-floodcrm-1l3l