[IP] VeriSign prepares to relaunch "Site Finder" -- calls

Thu Feb 12 16:23:47 UTC 2004

At 04:25 PM 2/10/2004, Paul Vixie wrote:

>nanog at vo.cnchost.com (JC Dill) writes:
>
> > Just as Canter and Siegel's green card spam was a novel way to (ab)use
> > SMTP for Canter and Siegel's profit, ten years later Verisign develops
> > Sitefinder [1] - a novel way to (ab)use DNS requests for Verisign's
> > profit. ...
>
>while i won't fault your analogy on structural grounds, i challenge it
>on factual grounds.  the c&s green card imbroglio came from nntp, not smtp.

Yes, the Green Card spam of 4/94 was on usenet, my bad.

But in early 1994 *email* spam also became a problem.  I've found various 
references that say email spam started becoming a problem in January 1994 
(starting with the "Global Alert for All: Jesus is Coming" spam to usenet, 
followed by email spam), and in April 1994 (starting with C&S's Green Card 
spam to usenet, followed by email spam).  I can't pin down an exact date or 
email for the first unsolicited bulk/commercial email spam spew of 1994 - I 
keep on finding cites to the "first spam" referring back to the DEC spam on 
ARPANET in 1978.

         <http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html>
         <http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html>

In any event, UCE/UBE email spam was clearly a big problem by July 1994 
when it was the topic of a Time Magazine article:

         "Battle for the Soul of the Internet", by Philip Elmer-Dewitt
         TIME Domestic, July 25, 1994 Volume 144, No. 4

It is 2004 now, and we have not accomplished a single thing to actually 
stop the exponentially increasing spew of spam.

> > I believe that there is no good "operational" way to solve either problem.
>
>and yet, the place to discuss non-operational solutions is not nanog at .  i
>suspect that you will find plenty of places to make your proposals, wherein
>many other people will also make their own proposals, with nobody reading
>anybody else's proposals.  sort of like here, except politics not operations.

Are you REALLY saying that:

A)  When someone proposes something that will break the operation of the 
Internet as we know it; and
B)  There is no immediately apparent or obvious  "operational" solution 
besides playing Whack-A-Mole with the abuser(s);
C)  We shouldn't discuss it here - to attempt to keep it from being 
implemented or to see if someone discovers a true "operational" solution?

How can we consider the pros and cons of various (operational/social/legal) 
solutions to network operations problems if we can't discuss and consider 
*all* possible solutions?

jc

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