North American Network Operators Group

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RE: Security of DNSBL spam block systems

  • From: Phil Rosenthal
  • Date: Tue Jul 23 02:33:21 2002

Title: Message
IMHO Even the really large DNSBL's are barely used -- I think (much) less than 5% of total human mail recipients are behind a mailserver that uses one...
--Phil
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Big_Bandwidth
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 2:14 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Security of DNSBL spam block systems

What are the security implications of someone hacking a DNSBL (Real-time-spam-block-list) and changing the block list to include (deny email from) some very large portion or all IPv4 space? 
 
Given that a signifigant number of the spam blocking lists seem to operate on a shoestring budget in someone's basement, how can we be assured that they have sufficient resources to secure their systems adequatley, and monitor for intrusion 24x7?
 
Unless I am missing something, this would seem to be a real handy and centralized method for someone to interfere substantially with the proper operation of a few thousand email servers and hold up global email traffic for a few hours.
 
-BB