Anti-Spam Router -- opinions?

Mon Apr 5 16:25:18 UTC 2004

From: "Matthew Crocker" <matthew at crocker.com>
> Sounds like YABA  (Yet Another Band Aid) solution for spam.  If
> rate-limiting the spam packets does an effective job at killing spam.
> It  will only make the spammers switch to a distrubuted attack method
> using trojaned virus hosts sending 1 mail message at a time.  They are
> already doing this in some cases. SPAM is a living breathing entity
> that can learn and adapt.  The smarter the network gets at killing it
> off, the smarter it gets in attacking.  The evolution of spam/viruses
> is astounding and getting quicker all the time.  The turntide box may
> be a good solution but it is expensive,   I'll wait for the SNORT
> add-on that does the same thing ;)
>
> -Matt
>

That's exactly what I was thinking when reading their documentation. A large
portion of the spam we receive on our servers comes from hijacked broadband
customers. I don't see how effective it would be rate limiting these guys,
because the source IP is almost always unique. Still, if it could cut spam
traffic by even half of what they advertise (92% on a system similar to
ours), that would help tremendously.

-Andy