August 2000 - Test - lists.nanog.org

RE: spammers will move offshore?
by Martin Cooper 10 Aug '00

10 Aug '00

Roeland M.J. Meyer <rmeyer(a)mhsc.com> writes: > SPAM is a side-issue here and not really relevent to losing > connectivity with an entire continent. I don't know -- I think we could probably afford to lose connectivity to large parts of the APNIC database without major issues; it would probably halve the amount of SPAM we get and the amount of time wasted complaining about it to unresponsibe admins as well. M.

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RE: surge in spam email (fwd)
by rdobbins＠netmore.net 10 Aug '00

10 Aug '00

We have a zero-tolerance policy for spam, too, and do our best to stop it -before- we get complaints. If we receive a complaint, we do a quick (within minutes, not hours or days) investigation to verify the facts, then shut down the spammer. It's funny, though - the only reason -I- care about spam on a personal level is when it chokes a mail server, or someone starts spamming a listserv. I have a pretty good set of filtering rules on my relay and my client, and the little bit that gets through I just delete. When it's in my own inbox, it annoys me about as much as junk postal mail, or telephone solicitors - i.e., not at all. I toss the former in the trash, and tell the latter to toss -themselves- in the trash. Life's too short to waste on developing an ulcer because of morons, you know? I guess the traffic does add up to significant $$$ in transport for the larger transit providers, though. -----Original Message----- From: John Fraizer [mailto:nanog@EnterZone.Net] Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 10:14 PM To: Brad Cc: David Charlap; nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: Re: surge in spam email (fwd) On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, Brad wrote: > > On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, David Charlap wrote: > > > With a proper set of laws on the books, law enforcement could simply > > read the content of the spam to get a phone number, address or PO box, > > and prosecute whoever owns it. The fact that they abused a foreign > > server in the process shouldn't change anything. > > The only problem with that is the simple fact that geting > innocent people in trouble is more likely. For example: > "Dumb Person A" sends a million SPAMs to anyone who will > complain about it. In the message, they put a note telling > the recipiant to send $5 to "Innocent Victim B"'s Home/PO > BOX address. Then person B gets all kinds of complaints, > and if the law read the email message, then they would pay > the price too. > > -Brad > This is precisely the problem with some providers current policy. Case in point: Someone SPAMvertized a website hosted by one of our customers. The SPAM was injected from a UUNet dialup port by one of THEIR customers. What was their response? They threatened to blackhole the /20 that contained the IP address of the website that was SPAMvertized. We try to make our BGP announcements responsibly but, actions like this will force us to announce specific /24's, especially when further investigation showed that the individual who SPAMvertized the site had no affiliation with it what-so-ever and had done so in attempt to get the site shut down. In the conference call with one of our upstreams and UUNet, I asked them if this was their firm policy -- no exceptions -- they blackholed ANY site that was SPAMvertized. I was told yes -- UNTIL I asked what they would do if someone SPAMvertized _THEIR_ site to 10,000,000 newsgroups as a test of their policy. For what it's worth, we, along with the customer in question have a ZERO TOLERANCE policy on SPAM. The site in question _was_ shut down during our investigation. Punishing someone without proof that they indeed have done something that is unacceptable is just opening ourselfs up for the newest, _EASIEST_ DoS attack ever. Now, a single 14.4 modem connect SPAM injector site can shut down a site sitting on OC192. Tons of bang for the buck to the DoS kiddies, Huh? Want to hurt the IPO of the latest .com to go public? Just SPAMvertize about it. --- John Fraizer EnterZone, Inc

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RE: spammers will move offshore?
by Morgan Dollard 10 Aug '00

10 Aug '00

andy, disregarding sexual spam, and focusing only on spam, in the US, YOU ARE paying for the time wasted for the spam processed, by paying taxes. Now im not saying spam is good, dont even think for a second i am, i cannot stand oopening my mailbox to find 150 spam in it (a newsgroup mailbox). i couldnt agree more with the fact that it does waste bandwith, server space and cpu, and pisses the general population off, but when i receive spam saying wana make 20k in a week, i wouldnt dream of suing that person, nor would i sue if they sent me any other junk mail stuff (sexual left aside). The meaning of my post was to point out the fact, that MAYBE, if such standard practices werent allowed in the first place, the problem wouldnt arrise. Every1 in this industry knows about the so called Internet gold rush all sales/marketing people picture of, and the change in web technology over the past 5 years has considerably shown that. they make more apealing stuff ( more bandwith and size consuming), and send of bulk mail, we build better backbones to transport it, but in the same way that u are paying for junk mail or spam, ur also paying for gamers,and pirates sharing gigz of warez and yet if u removed just both of these comunities from the net, you'd have solved more by stopign piracy which is consting the industry truck loads of money, compared to the time, money (and obviously publicity etc etc etc) spent during a trial against a spammer. all this is jsut to point out that NO MATTER what you do, to restrict abuses on the internet, only servers located inside the USA geographical area are subject to american laws, even though most of the junk i receive comes from US servers, and not european or asian servers. in the end, unless u have the feds track spamers as the most dangerous people to effectively sedn them to already overpopulated jails and cost more money to tax payers, you havent fixed anything. just like hackers find hiles in security systems, so will spamers. spam in a can, good, spam in a packet, BAD Morgan -----Original Message----- From: Andy Walden [mailto:andy@tigerteam.net] Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2000 16:10 To: Morgan Dollard Cc: 'Derek J. Balling'; Barry Shein; nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: RE: spammers will move offshore? > Im confuesed about the origin of this discussion, since i mised the kick > off, but i see way too much concern over spam, we've all been receiving junk > mail in our Mailboxes (paper plastic stuff) for years, and has any1 ever > been sued or banned from the US postal service for it? > Im gona add real quick that im not american, and quicky disagree with the > fact that americans arent liked, its jsut that the fact that you try to > control the rest of the world, INCLUDING, the internet, makes people think > twice. the internet belongs to no one, and child pornography might be legal > in some weird country in the world, but thats not the issue here. SPAM, > typically unsolicited mail, is no differnet from having jehova witnesses > knock at your door, or one of them salesman try to sell u insurance a house > a boat, the moon, hell his underwear even. Do u actually SUE that guy for > it? i agree that spam is anoying, even mailign lsitst like this one get > picked up email addresses, and that there should be something done to fix > it, but how can u prosecute people on the internet when u allow the same > practice to go unbothered in real life. I'm sure I'm won't be the only to reply this with answer. I pay for my mail server. I pay for my bandwidth that connects my mailserver to the rest of the world. I have it down to an exact finite price how much I pay per megabyte for the privilege for my traffic to be on the internet. I have a little less finite price for the cost of disk space on my server to handle the thousands of spams that my customers recieve (that none of them want) and for the CPU time to process that spam. If someone takes the time and money to mail me something via the post office, fine. The expense is their's, not mine. If someone takes their time to come to my door, fine, their expense is their time and not mine since I don't have to answer. I don't have a choice with spam. In fact, to draw the anology out more, if someone came to my house saying offensive highly sexual things I could quite possibly have that person arrested for harassment or obscene acts. This is not the case with spam, where a large amount of the spam is porn related. This is the fundemental difference between spam and other traditional forms of advertising. Where the cost is placed.. Regards, andy Disclaimer ---------- This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. This communication represents the originator's personal views and opinions, which do not necessarily reflect those of the NSC Group. If you are not the original recipient or the person responsible for delivering the email to the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this email in error, and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If you received this email in error, please immediately notify administrator(a)nscglobal.com.

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Harris Interactive temporary restraining order against MAPS-RBL d enied.
by rdobbins＠netmore.net 09 Aug '00

09 Aug '00

Score one for the good guys: http://mail-abuse.org/pressreleases/2000-08-08.html ----------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins(a)netmore.net> // 818.535.5024 voice

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Re: surge in spam email (fwd)
by Derek J. Balling 09 Aug '00

09 Aug '00

At 3:54 PM -0700 8/9/00, Nicole Harrington. wrote: > The real need is to crack down on the websites and email domains >that they are >promoting. 99% of which are here in the US. > Abovenet for one.. albeit a little gung ho, will shutdown any website >advertised in a spam unless the owner can prove it wasn't them who did or >authorized the spam. Unfortunatly, this is what is needed in most cases. Not to sound dense... how do you prove that you DIDN'T pay someone to spam for you? Me: See, here's my company's bank statements, we didn't pay them a thing. AboveNet: You could have paid cash. Me: See, here's my personal bank statement. AboveNet: What's this ATM transaction? What did you use that cash there for? Me: That was to have some spending cash at the ballpark. AboveNet: Do You have receipts for the refreshments to show that this money had nothing to do with the spam? ...etc. While I commend the anti-spam attitude, "prove you had nothing to do with it" is impossible, meaning "if you're an abovenet customer, your connectivity is subject to the whim of any spammer you piss off somehow who decides to get you kicked off by spamming your name around the world." (Presuming that your statement re: abovenet's policy is an accurate synopsis) D

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Open IP Directed Broadcast List... (fwd)
by Bill Sehmel 09 Aug '00

09 Aug '00

Thought the people on this list that are not on bugtraq might like to see this. Bill Sehmel bsehmel(a)opalnetworks.com Opalnetworks INC. Is your network secure? www.opalnetworks.com ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 22:59:37 -0400 From: dies <dies(a)PULLTHEPLUG.COM> To: BUGTRAQ(a)SECURITYFOCUS.COM Subject: Open IP Directed Broadcast List... Well, I've rescanned the Internet. I've chosen to scan down to /27 subnets this time. My new list of open broadcasts is available at.... http://www.pulltheplug.com If you are an ISP or work for one, PLEASE VISIT THIS SITE AND CHECK FOR YOUR NETWORKS OR DOWNSTREAMS!! If there are no broadcasts to use, there are no broadcast based attacks! 125102 networks broken...I've posted the top 4000 amp sites this time around... As always I'm looking for help...If you think you can help out, email me. Enjoy

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RE: surge in spam email (fwd)
by Derek J. Balling 09 Aug '00

09 Aug '00

>I think the point is that the spammers are currently inside the US or have >interests in the US: the goal should be the hammer the spammer, not the >(negligently) innocent relay. So then the spammers themselves move offshore, doing "marketing" for US companies, putting their tactics outside the reach. Unless you want to broadly be able to penalize the US companies for the actions of foreign-based contractors' actions committed outside of the US (a very hairy idea, legally, I would think... rats nest) D

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AOL caves in to spammers
by Roy 09 Aug '00

09 Aug '00

AOL restores Harris Interactive access Harris Interactive (HPOL: news, msgs) said Tuesday it has dropped federal charges against America Online (AOL: news, msgs). In a lawsuit brought two weeks ago, Harris accused AOL and other Internet service providers of harming its business by blocking Harris' e-mails to registered participants of its opinion surveys. The block was instituted after an e-mail monitoring service, Mail Abuse Prevention System, identified Harris as a voluminous sender of unsolicited, commercial e-mail. AOL restored Harris Interactive's communication capabilities with its respondents who have AOL addresses. Litigation against remaining defendants in the case will continue, Harris said.

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RE: question about traffic eng/ Cisco CEF.
by rdobbins＠netmore.net 09 Aug '00

09 Aug '00

This question is more appropriately asked in the USENET comp.dcom.* hierarchies. -----Original Message----- From: Jaideep Chandrashekar [mailto:jaideepc@cs.umn.edu] Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 1:47 PM To: nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: question about traffic eng/ Cisco CEF. Hi, I seem to be having some problems trying to use Cisco CEF on a 7200. My problem description is as follows. I need some way of sharing load (connections) across multiple links. The routes are all statically configured and have the same distance (though physically of different lengths). When I enable cef and set it to share load on a per destination mode, for some reason, all the traffic to a destination takes a single route .. though the route table shows two equal cost paths. The only point I might be missing is that I am looking at very few connections (2-3) and that load sharing with cef might be engineered to share load in a statistical sense (only kick in with large number of connections). Could anybody throw any light on this. Also ... is there any way to clear the routing table so that when a new link comes up, (and a new route is added to a list of equal cost paths) all the connections are again redistributed across the links. Couldn't seem to be able to make existing connections switch paths. With fast switching ... was able to do this by flushing the routecache .. but cef doesn't use a cache (says the documentation).... Any help is much appreciated. -jaideep

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surge in spam email
by tony bourke 09 Aug '00

09 Aug '00

Has anyone else noticed a surge in the amount of spam email they've been getting? Anyone know the cause? I use RBL but I'm still getting quite a bit. Tony -------------- -- ---- ---- --- - - - - - -- - - - - - - Tony Bourke tony(a)vegan.net

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