Time to check the rate limits on your mail servers

Thu Feb 3 21:55:20 UTC 2005

Creating an invincible mail client, still only addresses the symptom, and 
not the disease. I would contend that any attempts made to harden a mail 
client, will, (and have always been..), be countered with a new exploit, a 
new method of exploiting the system.
 The only way to really control spam, is to make it unprofitable, both for 
the hosting providers, and websites that use this as a form of mass 
marketing.
If say, a 'top 100 domains' (or 10,000, if need be..), list of offending 
websites were assembled, continually updated, and used universally to null 
route the websites paying for these services, (and in some cases, entire 
blocks owned by unscrupulous service providers hosting these websites, in 
the case that are continually proffering these services to offending 
parties..), it would soon become the case that if you use spam to mass 
market your product, you risk losing your access to a portion of the 
internet.
Of course, there are many lists of this kind, but what is lacking, is the 
willingness to launch a coordinated effort, or agreement on a proven and 
effective criteria for identifying how this could/should be regulated.
 I have heard the argument that we are not in the business of determining 
what should be permitted on the internet, and for the most part I would tend 
to agree, but I view this as a technical and not an ethical issue, and when 
seen in that context, the solutions seem obvious. Control spam? Attack it at 
the source, -follow the money- and make those that would profit from the 
abuse of the system accountable by denying them services.

John

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Miller, Mark" <mark.miller at qwest.com>
To: <nanog at merit.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 3:37 PM
Subject: RE: Time to check the rate limits on your mail servers

>
>  How come it is always about controlling the symptoms and not the
> illness?  The vast majority of these
> "spam drones" are compromised WINDOWS machines.  If the operating system
> and dominant email applications so easily allows the users' machines to
> be taken over by a third party, then there is something wrong with the
> operating system and the mail applications.  It occurs to me that the
> solution is not to limit the range of destruction, but to defuse the
> bomb.  Perhaps the focus for a solution should move up the model to
> layer 7.
>
> - Mark
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of
> Michael.Dillon at radianz.com
> Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 8:47 AM
> To: nanog at merit.edu
> Subject: Re: Time to check the rate limits on your mail servers
>
>
>
>> > Do you let your customers send an unlimited number of emails per
>> > day? Per hour? Per minute? If so, then why?
>>
>> Doing that - especially now when this article has hit the popular
>> press and there's going to be lots more people doing the same thing -
>> is going to be equivalent of hanging out a "block my email" sign.
>
> I don't understand your comment. This is an
> arms race. The spammers and botnet builders
> are attempting to make their bots use the
> exact same email transmission channels as
> your customers' email clients. They are
> getting better at doing this as time goes
> on. I think we are at the point where the
> technical expertise of the botnet builders
> is greater than the technical expertise of
> most people working in email operations.
>
> ...
> 