Wired mag article on spammers playing traceroute games with trojaned boxes

Thu Oct 9 16:48:28 UTC 2003

At 12:31 PM 10/9/2003, Joe Boyce wrote:

>Thursday, October 9, 2003, 9:19:37 AM, you wrote:
>
>
>
>VA> Personally, I think preventing residential broadband customers from 
>hosting
>VA> servers would limit a lot of that. I'm not saying that IS the solution.
>VA> Whether or not that's the right thing to do in all circumstances for each
>VA> ISP is a long standing debate that surfaces here from time to time. 
>Same as
>VA> allowing people to host mail servers on cable modems or even allowing 
>them
>VA> to access mail servers other than the ISP's.
>
>It's not like those customers are aware they are hosting servers, they
>most likely were exploited and are now unaware they are hosting
>websites.

Yes, that was kind of my point, although as a co-worker pointed out, many 
spamvertised sites run on alternate ports so I guess that wouldn't really 
matter all that much anyway. So it wouldn't help if an unknowing host was 
hosting a web site on port 37241 which was sent as a link in spam... http 
traffic can of course (as I'm surprised nobody's pointed out yet) run on a 
myriad of TCP ports just like practically any service. Maybe going back to 
securing broadband networks would help somewhat as well... Of course 
everything boils down to the end user which is what I've always believed 
in, but end users will not likely change in the way they run their 
computers. Network operators often times have to take some of these issues 
up by enforcing a policy for the good of the customer. I'm still not saying 
that is RIGHT to do in all circumstances, but it's an option that logically 
would reduce some (not all by any means) of the problems out there with 
people having owned machines.

Vinny Abello
Network Engineer
Server Management
vinny at tellurian.com
(973)300-9211 x 125
(973)940-6125 (Direct)
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