Re: Anti-Spam Router -- opinions?

[Matthew Crocker <matthew () crocker com>]

On Apr 5, 2004, at 10:49 AM, Andy Johnson wrote:

> Has anyone had any experience with this device? Turntide.com. Looks 
> like a
> traffic-shaping device designed specifically for cutting down spammers
> throughput to your inbound SMTP servers. My main concern is, how does 
> it
> make the distinction between legitimate mass-mailings (e.g.: mailing 
> lists
> such as this one), and spam? Interesting approach to killing spam 
> though I
> must say.

Sounds like YABA  (Yet Another Band Aid) solution for spam.  If 
rate-limiting the spam packets does an effective job at killing spam. 
It  will only make the spammers switch to a distrubuted attack method 
using trojaned virus hosts sending 1 mail message at a time.  They are 
already doing this in some cases. SPAM is a living breathing entity 
that can learn and adapt.  The smarter the network gets at killing it 
off, the smarter it gets in attacking.  The evolution of spam/viruses 
is astounding and getting quicker all the time.  The turntide box may 
be a good solution but it is expensive,   I'll wait for the SNORT 
add-on that does the same thing ;)

-Matt