Re: spam return address backlash

[Gary Flynn <flynngn () JMU EDU>]

Roger Safian wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> In the last couple weeks we have seen several of our
> addresses used as the from address in spam.  This
> causes few serious problems, but does generate an
> increase in the number of spam complaints to our
> abuse aliases.
>
> It does cause a serious issue if the chosen address
> used by the spammer, also happens to be a real
> address in use here at Northwestern.  We have
> heard of people receiving hundreds of bounced messages
> per day if this happens.  We recommend filters,
> but there's little else we can do to stop this.
>
> My questions are two.  Is this happening elsewhere,
> and if so, have you recently noticed an increase
> in this activity?

I haven't been made aware of a significant increase
though I've received a handful of complaints from
people the past few weeks who thought they received
SPAM from JMU due to the spoofed address. Maybe we've
been lucky so far or if anyone has been the victim
of backscatter they haven't called.

Virus use of spoofed local addresses has been much
more common than SPAM use to this point.


--
Gary Flynn
Security Engineer
James Madison University
www.jmu.edu/computing/security