I'll just make this one comment, as I think this whole thread is probably off-topic, but this tactic has been used for quite some time by spammers. Even if they aren't using a version with the bogus timestamp, following the headers down, the forged line becomes obvious when you realise that the psi host never received it from bothere.net, plus there *is* no bothere.net. For further information on this topic, I would suggest either the spam-l mailing list, or send mail to spam-request@zorch.sf-bay.org. Many of these issues have long been hashed, and current topics on the spam problem are more properly discussed on one of those lists. Steve Mansfield steve@nwnet.net NorthWestNet Network Engineer 425-649-7467
On Fri, Sep 05, 1997 at 04:35:17PM -0400, Jeremy Elson wrote:
More recently, though, something much more insidious started to happen: spammers have started forging Received: lines in the headers to misdirect attempts at tracing the source of the mail! Here's one beautiful example of a spam header I received (my mailhost here was blaze.cs.jhu.edu):
From: mailman@domaol.net Received: from fs.IConNet.NET by blaze.cs.jhu.edu with ESMTP; Wed, 9 Apr 1997 07:54:13 GMT Sender: mailman@domaol.net Received: from 199.173.160.250 (ip19.new-haven.ct.pub-ip.psi.net [38.11.102.19]) by fs.IConNet.NET (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id DAA12207; Wed, 9 Apr 1997 03:54:27 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mailhost.bethere.net(alt2.bethere.net(214.756.86.9)) by bethere.net (8.8.5/8.6.5) with SMTP id GAA04732 for <friend@public.com>; Wed, 09 Apr 1997 02:52:20 -0600 (EST) ^^^^^^^^^^^ To: friend@public.com Message-ID: <37474743565665.JDL9087@bethere.net> [ "how did it get there?" ] The answer, of course, is that the mail really originated from a PSInet dialup, using IConNet.NET as a spam relay; the bottom Received: line is an utter forgery, presuambly added by the spam-mailing software. In fact, it's not even a very good forgery, because the supposed IP address of alt2.bethere.net is invalid (the 2nd octet is 756).
This is a known spamming program; the highlighted mistake would probably work _exceptionally_ well in your procmail file. :-)
Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592