North American Network Operators Group

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Anti-spam System Idea

  • From: Tim Thorpe
  • Date: Sat Feb 14 03:27:28 2004

I wanted to run this past you to see what you thought of it and get some
feedback on pro's and cons of this type of system.

 I have been thinking recently about the ever increasing amount of spam that
is flooding the internet, clogging mail servers, and in general pissing us
all off.

I think it time to do something about it. very few systems are effective at
blocking spam at the server level, and the ones that exist have a less then
stellar reputation and are not very effective on top of that.

95% of spam comes through relays and its headers are forged tracking an
E-mail back that you've received is becoming next to impossible, its also
very time consuming and why waste your time on scumbags?

my idea;
a DC network that actively scans for active relays and tests them, it
compiles a list on a daily basis of compromised IP addresses (or even
addresses that are willingly allowing the relay) making this list freely
available to ISPs via a secure and tracked site.

to test a relay you actually have to send mail through it, I have a solution
for this as well, the clients are set to e-mail a certain address that
changes daily the E-mails are signed with a crypto key to verify
authenticity (that way spammers can't abuse the address if it doesn't have
the key, it get canned)

work with ISP's to correct issues on their network help completely black
list IP's from their network that are operating as an open relay and
redirect to a page that alerts them of the compromise and solutions to fix
the problem. the only way people are going to become aware of security
issues such as this is if something happens that wakes them up, if they
can't access a % of the web it would hopefully clue them in.

because these scans only need to take place once per IP per day and over a
large distribution of computers performing the tests, I don't see network
load becoming a big issue, no bigger then it currently is.

the only way to fight spammers is to squeeze them out of hiding, and that's
what I hope this system would be designed to do.

I do not have the coding knowledge to do this I will need coders, I do have
the PR skills to work with ISPs. I am also working with my congresswoman to
pave the way for legal clearance for this program.

I would greatly appreciate your input on this and anything I may have
overlooked. I would also like to know if this would be a DC program you
would run.

a lot of people argue the practical application of DC. although we know
differently this project would show them what DC can do for them and wake
them up to perhaps other DC projects.