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SMTP abuse (Re: The FBI tripping over itself again)

  • From: Mike Lewinski
  • Date: Tue Oct 31 15:22:22 2000

> Networks under my control (and more so some I've been called in
> to assist) are currently under attack by SMTP dictionary-attackers,
> which seems to be reincarnations of the ghosts of GeolistPro.
>  [ scumbags that are trying to deliver spam, and/or are trying to
>    learn  every possible email address in a given domain, to the
>    tune of up to 550,000 per attack (there's obviously a lot of
>    [email protected] scraped from existing spam-lists).

It's my belief that some (or all) of this activity is currently instigated
by EarthOnline Software, makers of GeoList Pro.

This URL is the basis for my suspicions:

http://www.earthonline-software.com/targeted-a.html

GeoList's "feature" was that it collected regionally targeted lists of
e-mail addresses. How can one do that? The only two ways I can think of are
dictionary attacks against ISP web servers ( GET /~aaaa) or dictionary
attacks against ISP's SMTP servers (RCPT TO: <aaaaa>). The former method
would be much less successful, since not all customers will have their own
web directories, and not all providers will use the /~ syntax either.

Mike

P.S. The SMTP abuse listserv is still here:

http://www.kopower.com/mailman/listinfo/smtpabuse