Any way to P-T-P Distribute the RBL lists?

Fri Sep 26 01:50:08 UTC 2003

something not very far from the discussion on this thread was proposed 
last year by some researchers at columbia. for those of you who like 
reading academic papers: 
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~danr/publish/2002/Kero2002:SOS-camera.pdf

	-- ratul

Aaron Dewell wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 25 Sep 2003, Eric A. Hall wrote:
>  > >             I know you all have probably already thought of this, but
>  > > can anyone think of a feasible way to run a RBL list that does not have
>  > > a single point of failure? Or any attackable entry?
>  >
>  > Easy. Have the master server only be reachable by replication partners
>  > through a VPN connection, and have dozens of secondaries advertising
>  > through multiple anycast addresses.
> 
> So why couldn't you follow this plan without the VPN and anycast?  Have a
> couple of master servers totally unpublished (nobody except the secondaries
> know about it), then have dozens of secondaries that are the ones actually
> used (or AXFR'd off of).  You can't attack all the secondaries at once if
> there are enough of them, and the master server is unknown (hopefully).
> 
> You could certainly improve on that system with a VPN, but the service is
> reasonable without it.  Make your secondaries be volunteers who sign an
> agreement to never tell anyone what your master IP addresses are.  If they
> get out, shift the master files to a secondary, notify the other secondaries
> by secure channels, and you're back in business.
> 
> Even better - Publish all the servers, nobody knows who the masters are of
> this list of N servers, and rotate it when needed or every so often.
> 
> I'd be a secondary/rotating master in that setup.  I'm sure you'd get a
> bunch of volunteers.
> 
> Aaron