North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: Spammers Skirt IP Authentication Attempts

  • From: Dan Mahoney, System Admin
  • Date: Wed Sep 08 19:46:41 2004


On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Ricardo "Rick" Gonzalez wrote:


Ricardo,

I *do* stop spam within my domain of control. I terminate spammers as I find them. In the event a customer appears spammish in his entirety, I kill them. In the event spam originates from a single ip, or a single customer-hosted domain name, I give the customer the chance to clean up the mess and get it off our network. Bonus points are of course added if the customer is willing to prove their innocence by pointing the domain somewhere bad (like 127.0.0.1), instead of moving it off to be a landing site elsewhere.

There *are* of course instances where machines are compromised, or clueless people install old versions of formmail (which is continually compromised in new ways), and I get those abuse reports as well, and tend to them as well.

On occasion it's taken longer than necessary to kill spammers for a couple of interesting legal reasons I'm not at liberty to discuss in this forum, but I keep us clean enough that we're not on any of the major blacklists.

All this, however, is secondary to my real reason for even replying to your mail at all.

I'd like to applaud you personally for taking a list that I'm posting to with my personal email address, and dragging my job into it (there's a separation, there). It shows a level of maturity I'd reserve for the frag-server customers we host.

This topic is still getting older, further off topic, and further and further away from the spirit of the list.

-Dan Mahoney


Dan:

SPF, SpamAssassin, and other measures are all steps in the right
direction in making spam less of a problem than it is today.  I
applaud you for taking part in their respective forums.

What you fail to realize is that spam is a problem best stopped within
your domain of control.  According to Google, it appears as though you
have a problem with terminating spamming customers, in accordiance
with your own AUP:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=ezzi+spam&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&scoring=d

What I found more alarming were this the double standards set forth by
this post:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=5a29bb5.0202260613.3addb4ce%40posting.google.com&rnum=2

I'm sorry, but you aren't entitled to anything.  If you'd like to be
removed from the DNSBL's, you need to remove your offending customers.
You can't just say "these customers are spammers, block them, don't
block anyone else" and keep collecting a check from them at the end of
the month.

"A los tontos no les dura el dinero."

---Ricardo

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 07:46:30 -0400 (EDT), Dan Mahoney, System Admin
<[email protected]> wrote:

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, vijay gill wrote:


And randomgibberish.comcast.net will still be in all the dynamic
blacklists.

I'm subscribed to both the SpamAssassin list, and this one.

This is getting seriously off-topic.

If you like SPF, embrace it. If not, don't.

This may very well be one of the things that time will tell on, much like
open relays, which were considered harmless, or things like telnet, which
used to be a complete standard, and now, my *remote reboot* units come SSH
capable.  Spamassassin and other spam control technologies are choosing
to.  It's ONE PIECE of a very large solution.  It's a solution to domain
forging, not to spam.  (nothing in this paragraph is anything new to this
list in the past week).

Can we please get on with our lives?

Thanks

-Dan Mahoney




On Wed, Sep 08, 2004 at 11:54:32AM +0100, Paul Jakma wrote:

Except that, SPF records are as easy to setup for a spammer, as for you and I. If the above is a spammer, then SPF for foobar.com will list randomgibberish.comcast.net as an authorised sender.

SPF will absolutely not have any effect on spam.

But if instead of foobar.com, it is vix.com or citibank.com, then their SPF records will not point at randomgibberish.comcast.net as an authorized sender. That means that if I do get a mail purporting to be from citi from randomgibberish, I can junk it without hesitation.

/vijay


--


"It's three o'clock in the morning.  It's too late for 'oops'.  After
Locate Updates, don't even go there."

-Paul Baecker
  January 3, 2k
  Indeed, sometime after 3AM



--------Dan Mahoney--------
Techie,  Sysadmin,  WebGeek
Gushi on efnet/undernet IRC
ICQ: 13735144   AIM: LarpGM
Site:  http://www.gushi.org
---------------------------




--


"...Somebody fed you sugar. Shit!"

--Tracy, after noticing Gatorade on my desk.

Ezzi Computers, October 18th 2003
Approx 11PM

--------Dan Mahoney--------
Techie,  Sysadmin,  WebGeek
Gushi on efnet/undernet IRC
ICQ: 13735144   AIM: LarpGM
Site:  http://www.gushi.org
---------------------------