funsec mailing list archives
Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam
From: Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 12:14:02 +0000 (GMT)
I don't think Nickl claimed in his email, to know what would stop spam. I think he only claimed to know that the suggested method that he was commenting on, wouldn't stop it. One important thing about spam, is that it isn't some natural process like the rain. I know how to stop rain - you put up a waterproof roof. OK, when I open the door, a little bit of rain will come in, but I don't mind that. Rain isn't the result of Intelligent Design, but spam is, and the Designers will change their tactics to get round any blocking system that isn't 100%. If you leave some small gap, then all the spam will be designed to exploit that gap. It isn't like rain. My opinion is that spam is an economic problem. The problem is that there's profits to be made by stealing the use of other people's computers to send spam. The solution has to be economic, and the one that I favour, is one that imposes a monetary cost on the spam sender, and if that's an unwitting user, then it's only fair that the cost imposed on other people by their lack of security, should also be borne by the unwitting user. Or at least, part of the cost. Other people have their own ideas for dealing with spam. It might be that there is no solution for entirely dealing with spam, and I can think of a possible proof of this. But I don't need a total solution, I just need something that throttles it back considerably. On Sun, 10 Dec 2006, Dennis Henderson wrote:
On 12/10/06, Nick FitzGerald <nick () virus-l demon co uk> wrote:Dude VanWinkle wrote:Spammers shouldn't be killed, we should just get rid of botnets, orLike that's going to happen any time this decade...block port 25 outbound from the consumer ISP's unless the user requests it.You don't understand spam at all, do you? Think about it -- if botnets are a problem then lack of outgoing port 25 in large ISP's is not a problem for a spammer (you can't possibly think that in general spam _must_ come from outside your network, can you?), and if botnets are a problem then more stringent port 25/SMTP checks in many large ISP's will not make much difference with webmail or other submission methods, and if botnets are a problem then moving to parasitic spam will not be a problem in the unlikely event that all the other real spam-causing problems get fixed...So what do you propose, Mr. Nick, seeing how you seem to know precisely what will and wont stop Spam. The huge majority of Spam that I am involved with comed from residential sources. By denying those sources, we've managed to really knock Spam out of our enterprise. I think sending email is a task that should be left to legitimate server platforms, not mindless people's PC's. Some ISP's do block port 25 and we certainly dont see Spam from them. I'm sure you have the solution.. Lets here it!! :)
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Current thread:
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam, (continued)
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Bruce Ediger (Dec 08)
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Paul Vixie (Dec 08)
- RE: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam David Harley (Dec 08)
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Brian Loe (Dec 08)
- RE: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam David Harley (Dec 08)
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Brian Loe (Dec 08)
- RE: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah (Dec 08)
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Nick FitzGerald (Dec 08)
- Message not available
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Nick FitzGerald (Dec 10)
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Dennis Henderson (Dec 10)
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Drsolly (Dec 11)
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Dennis Henderson (Dec 11)
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Drsolly (Dec 11)
- Re: 'Bad Guys are Winning' Despite Fight Against Spam Brian Loe (Dec 08)