Spamhaus...

Sat Feb 20 14:51:33 UTC 2010

On Feb 20, 2010, at 8:08 AM, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 08:20:36PM -0500, William Herrin wrote:
>> Whine all you want about backscatter but until you propose a
>> comprehensive solution that's still reasonably compatible with RFC
>> 2821's section 3.7 you're just talking trash.
> 
> We're well past that.  Every minimally-competent postmaster on this
> planet knows that clause became operationally obsolete years ago [1], and
> has configured their mail systems to always reject, never bounce. [2]

So write a BCP that amends RFC2821. This HAS been done before. When directed broadcasts were the hot new way to cause damage, RFC 2644 was born (a.k.a. BCP34). It simply said that since the original document was written, it had been determined that a required default setting was found to damage the Internet and that henceforth, the default value MUST be the opposite. The option is still there for those cases when needed, but damage is avoided. Those coding up new router stacks hopefully heeded the advice. Certainly two of the leading vendors at the time did so.

Instead of saying "well, it's obvious to everyone," do something about it.