RE: Mailing lists and unsolicited/malicious spam

["David Taylor" <David.Taylor () austrac gov au>]

It would be good to see the user's email addresses obfuscated in some
way. 


M2c
M@nga

-----Original Message-----
From: full-disclosure-admin () lists netsys com
[mailto:full-disclosure-admin () lists netsys com] On Behalf Of n3td3v
Sent: Friday, 26 November 2004 11:38 AM
To: full-disclosure () lists netsys com
Subject: [Full-disclosure] Mailing lists and unsolicited/malicious spam

How many people are actually subscribed (on FD) and what are the
general figures for subscribers for high profile mailing lists, has
any figures ever been released? And would the theft of the list of
e-mails subscribed be of value to spammers? I think it would be, I
hope FD admin is up to date with and keeping tracks of bugs as the
rest of us. If malicious hackers/script kiddies got hold of the list,
I think they would be able to attack a good percentage of inboxes with
whatever they send. Weather it be porn spam or a phishing to take
passwords or if it be malcious code to take advantage of POP mail
clients via SMTP.

I think already FD is targeted by spam/phishing hackers who wish to
collect e-mail addresses for further exploration. Perhaps posting on
FD could be a security risk in itself (well not just FD but mailing
lists online in general) as far as POP mail clients and SMTP is
concerned. (web-based e-mail has its own problems which usually don't
have the risk of taking over computers like mail clients do. Usually
web-based e-mail is just at risk from xss/cookie disclosure/account
theft, whereas malicious code sent to mail clients can take over whole
computer systems)

For those of you who already have a "mailing list only" e-mail address
and a seperate address for work related/corporate/company matters, do
you see a different level of unsolicited spam, compared to the work
address or other private e-mail address for friends and family? I'm
thinking about setting up the same myself, just for experimental
reasons! I think i'll find some differences between the two.

Sorry if you don't care about anti-spam, but its something i'm
interested in. Sorry to all the script kiddie hax0rs who don't like me
working against you and your e-mail collecting bots!

Plus, do FD admin and other high profile mailing lists have honey pots
or similar methods to catch FD/mailing list born spam? I believe a big
mailing list can have its own domestic/internal spam, seperate from
the general internet who are not subscribed to the given mailing list
or lists, and even different mailing lists having its own group of
spammers targeting them, with its own nature of spam/phish/malicious
code exploration.

Thanks, 
n3td3v

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