Another DNS blacklist is taken down

Wed Sep 24 16:28:39 UTC 2003

I thought ya'll might be interested to hear that yet another DNS blacklist
has been taken down out of fear of the DDoS attacks that took down
Osirusoft, Monkeys.com, and the OpenRBL.  Blackholes.compu.net suffered a
joe-job earlier this week.  Apparently the joe-jobbing was enough to
convince some extremely ignorant mail admins that Compu.net is spamming
and blocked mail from compu.net.  Compu.net has also seen the effects of
DDoS attacks on other DNS blacklist maintainers.  They've decided that the
risk to their actual business is too great and they are pulling the plug
on their DNS blacklist before they come under the gun by spammers.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=3f70e839%241%40dimaggio.newszilla.com

Ron Guilmette, maintainer of the Monkeys.com blacklists has posted a 
farewell from Monkeys.com to news.admin.net-abuse.email.  Ron cites the 
total lack of interest in the attacks by both big network providers and 
law enforcement authorities as the ultimate reason he's pulling the plug.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22Now+retired+from+spam+fighting%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=vn1lufn8h6r38%40corp.supernews.com&rnum=4

It's truely a sad day for spam fighters everywhere.

So, my question for NANOG is how does one go about attracting the 
attention of law enforcement when your network is under attack?  How does 
the target of such an attack get a large network provider who's customers 
are part of the attack to pay attention?  Is media attention the only way 
to pressure a response from either group?  These DDoS attacks have 
received some attention in mainstream media:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/959094.asp?0cv=TB10
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/08/28/saboteurs_hit_spams_blockers

Apparently it hasn't been enough.  Legal remedies take too long and are
cost prohibitive (unless you're the DoJ).  Subpoenas and civil lawsuits
take months if not years.  Relief is needed in days if not hours.

Justin