Re: Port 25 inbound blocking

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>
Date: February 26, 2009 6:42:07 AM EST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:    Port 25 inbound blocking

> Port 25 blocking, as was noted on IP last week, is increasingly being
> used by ISPs around the world to combat the problem of spam.

While I applaud Comcast's decision to do this, finally, it's come way,  
way
too late.  The time to make this change was the spring of 2003, at which
point the problem was extremely well-known and growing exponentially.

See, for example:

        Rise of the spam zombies (Kevin Poulsen, April 2003)
        http://www.securityfocus.com/news/4217

followed a year later by

        Attack of Comcast's Internet zombies (Declan McCullagh, May 2004)
        http://news.com.com/Attack+of+Comcast%27s+Internet+zombies/2010-1034_3-5218178.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news

Fixing the problem six YEARS after it became so enormous that Comcast
was vying for the title of the world's largest spammer is hardly cause
for celebration.

Doubly so given that spammers have not been idle in the interim.  By the
time that Comcast and others [1] finally get this in place, and deal  
with the
myriad debugging and support issues, spammers will have deployed their  
next
tactic and will be looking forward to several more years of abuse via
their operations.

If Comcast et.al. are to effectively manage their networks in order to  
prevent
them from being abuse sources, they will have to learn to respond on a  
scale
of hours/days, rather than years.

---Rsk

[1] While Comcast is the topic here, many other ISPs around the world
are in the same position.  In the US, Verizon has been so badly affected
that it's been quite easy to track new FIOS rollouts just by noting when
the spam starts.




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