Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-08 Thread Master_PE
Op za 05-06-2004, om 10:26 schreef Kjetil Kjernsmo:
> On fredag 4. juni 2004, 03:24, s. keeling wrote:
> > I'm sick of whitelisting.  It doesn't work if you care about
> > communicating with people you've never met.
> 
> Me too. And I think that most absolutes, whether it is a single rule to 
> accept an e-mail or a single rule to reject is a Bad Thing[tm]
> 
> But I'd like to plug a bug report of mine, FOAF-based whitelists:
> http://bugzilla.spamassassin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3408
> 
> FOAF, Friend-of-a-Friend is meant to be used to mark up relationships, 
> and so, SpamAssassin could set a lower negative score to those you know 
> someone who knows, etc... If FOAF becomes as widespread as personal 
> homepages, it could be really useful. 
> 
> So, let me also plug another bug report of mine, let KAddressbook export 
> FOAF:
> http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72653
> 
> What about the privecy?

Good question! Well, I must admit I haven't thought so carefully about 
it, but I'm sure the hackers working on this have. For one thing, each 
and every one publish their own information, and in principle, a single 
hashed version of the trusted e-mail address should be sufficient for 
this to work, and that's not too bad... 

Best,

Kjetil



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-07 Thread Master_PE
Op za 05-06-2004, om 10:26 schreef Kjetil Kjernsmo:
> On fredag 4. juni 2004, 03:24, s. keeling wrote:
> > I'm sick of whitelisting.  It doesn't work if you care about
> > communicating with people you've never met.
> 
> Me too. And I think that most absolutes, whether it is a single rule to 
> accept an e-mail or a single rule to reject is a Bad Thing[tm]
> 
> But I'd like to plug a bug report of mine, FOAF-based whitelists:
> http://bugzilla.spamassassin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3408
> 
> FOAF, Friend-of-a-Friend is meant to be used to mark up relationships, 
> and so, SpamAssassin could set a lower negative score to those you know 
> someone who knows, etc... If FOAF becomes as widespread as personal 
> homepages, it could be really useful. 
> 
> So, let me also plug another bug report of mine, let KAddressbook export 
> FOAF:
> http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72653
> 
> What about the privecy?

Good question! Well, I must admit I haven't thought so carefully about 
it, but I'm sure the hackers working on this have. For one thing, each 
and every one publish their own information, and in principle, a single 
hashed version of the trusted e-mail address should be sufficient for 
this to work, and that's not too bad... 

Best,

Kjetil


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-07 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> You're talking about SPF. That's a concept, not an implementation.

Implementation details have already been posted.

> Effective use of SPF requires widespread adoption. Until/unless
> widespread adoption happens the promises of SPF are vaporware. 

Reasons why early adoption yields large benefits have already been
posted.

(Further attempt to redefine the word "vaporware" duly ignored as of
secondary concern.)

I expect we're done.
 



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-07 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> You're talking about SPF. That's a concept, not an implementation.

Implementation details have already been posted.

> Effective use of SPF requires widespread adoption. Until/unless
> widespread adoption happens the promises of SPF are vaporware. 

Reasons why early adoption yields large benefits have already been
posted.

(Further attempt to redefine the word "vaporware" duly ignored as of
secondary concern.)

I expect we're done.
 


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-06 Thread Russell Coker
On Sat, 5 Jun 2004 08:52, Michael Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >So, adding handling for SPF RRs in one's MTA yields significant
> >advantages today, despite the technology being new, because _all_ of the
> >forgemail claiming to be from aol.com, msn.com, hotmail.com, pobox.com,
> >etc. can be detected all in one step.
>
> Well, I guess the spammers will have to use different addresses. That
> shouldn't take long.

Which leads to more spam that uses addresses from small domains in the From: 
field, and thus more need for administrators of small servers to implement 
SPF records to counter it.

-- 
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http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/  Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/  My home page



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-06 Thread Russell Coker
On Sat, 5 Jun 2004 08:52, Michael Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >So, adding handling for SPF RRs in one's MTA yields significant
> >advantages today, despite the technology being new, because _all_ of the
> >forgemail claiming to be from aol.com, msn.com, hotmail.com, pobox.com,
> >etc. can be detected all in one step.
>
> Well, I guess the spammers will have to use different addresses. That
> shouldn't take long.

Which leads to more spam that uses addresses from small domains in the From: 
field, and thus more need for administrators of small servers to implement 
SPF records to counter it.

-- 
http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/   My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages
http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/  Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/postal/Postal SMTP/POP benchmark
http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/  My home page


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vapaorware Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-05 Thread Alvin Oga

hi ya

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, Michael Stone wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 05:26:07PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> >You mean like having extra meanings of the term "vaporware", ones that
> >you alone are aware of?  OK.

vaporware is good and bad ...

good, because if its features gets implemented "right" and if it is
needed, it will get widely adopted

vaporware is bad, when its something that is sold, that is not
yet fully functional to end users and in the old days, to generate
revenue for the company and commissions to the sales droids

think back to the stone ages .. even the linux kernel was vaporware in the
beginning and there were other equivalent options to choose from

c ya
alvin



vapaorware Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-05 Thread Alvin Oga

hi ya

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, Michael Stone wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 05:26:07PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> >You mean like having extra meanings of the term "vaporware", ones that
> >you alone are aware of?  OK.

vaporware is good and bad ...

good, because if its features gets implemented "right" and if it is
needed, it will get widely adopted

vaporware is bad, when its something that is sold, that is not
yet fully functional to end users and in the old days, to generate
revenue for the company and commissions to the sales droids

think back to the stone ages .. even the linux kernel was vaporware in the
beginning and there were other equivalent options to choose from

c ya
alvin


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Re: Unusual spam recently

2004-06-05 Thread Florian Weimer
* David Stanaway:

> Has anyone else been receiving unusual spam recently which contains no
> content?

Yes, I've seen it, too.

> Is this some spam engine checking MTAs to see if the addresses are
> accepted?

Looks like a mass-mailer bug to me.

-- 
Current mail filters: many dial-up/DSL/cable modem hosts, and the
following domains: bigpond.com, di-ve.com, fuorissimo.com, hotmail.com,
jumpy.it, libero.it, netscape.net, postino.it, simplesnet.pt, spymac.com,
tiscali.co.uk, tiscali.cz, tiscali.it, voila.fr, yahoo.com.



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-05 Thread Kjetil Kjernsmo
On fredag 4. juni 2004, 03:24, s. keeling wrote:
> I'm sick of whitelisting.  It doesn't work if you care about
> communicating with people you've never met.

Me too. And I think that most absolutes, whether it is a single rule to 
accept an e-mail or a single rule to reject is a Bad Thing[tm]

But I'd like to plug a bug report of mine, FOAF-based whitelists:
http://bugzilla.spamassassin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3408

FOAF, Friend-of-a-Friend is meant to be used to mark up relationships, 
and so, SpamAssassin could set a lower negative score to those you know 
someone who knows, etc... If FOAF becomes as widespread as personal 
homepages, it could be really useful. 

So, let me also plug another bug report of mine, let KAddressbook export 
FOAF:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72653


If I only had time to write the code... :-)  

Cheers,

Kjetil
-- 
Kjetil Kjernsmo
Astrophysicist/IT Consultant/Skeptic/Ski-orienteer/Orienteer/Mountaineer
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Homepage: http://www.kjetil.kjernsmo.net/OpenPGP KeyID: 6A6A0BBC



Re: Unusual spam recently

2004-06-05 Thread Florian Weimer
* David Stanaway:

> Has anyone else been receiving unusual spam recently which contains no
> content?

Yes, I've seen it, too.

> Is this some spam engine checking MTAs to see if the addresses are
> accepted?

Looks like a mass-mailer bug to me.

-- 
Current mail filters: many dial-up/DSL/cable modem hosts, and the
following domains: bigpond.com, di-ve.com, fuorissimo.com, hotmail.com,
jumpy.it, libero.it, netscape.net, postino.it, simplesnet.pt, spymac.com,
tiscali.co.uk, tiscali.cz, tiscali.it, voila.fr, yahoo.com.


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-05 Thread Kjetil Kjernsmo
On fredag 4. juni 2004, 03:24, s. keeling wrote:
> I'm sick of whitelisting.  It doesn't work if you care about
> communicating with people you've never met.

Me too. And I think that most absolutes, whether it is a single rule to 
accept an e-mail or a single rule to reject is a Bad Thing[tm]

But I'd like to plug a bug report of mine, FOAF-based whitelists:
http://bugzilla.spamassassin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3408

FOAF, Friend-of-a-Friend is meant to be used to mark up relationships, 
and so, SpamAssassin could set a lower negative score to those you know 
someone who knows, etc... If FOAF becomes as widespread as personal 
homepages, it could be really useful. 

So, let me also plug another bug report of mine, let KAddressbook export 
FOAF:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72653


If I only had time to write the code... :-)  

Cheers,

Kjetil
-- 
Kjetil Kjernsmo
Astrophysicist/IT Consultant/Skeptic/Ski-orienteer/Orienteer/Mountaineer
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Homepage: http://www.kjetil.kjernsmo.net/OpenPGP KeyID: 6A6A0BBC



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone

On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 05:26:07PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

You mean like having extra meanings of the term "vaporware", ones that
you alone are aware of?  OK.


You're talking about SPF. That's a concept, not an implementation.
Effective use of SPF requires widespread adoption. Until/unless
widespread adoption happens the promises of SPF are vaporware. Pointing
to a bunch of implementations of SPF doesn't speak to whether it's been
widely adopted. There have been many failed implementations of many
forgotten concepts over the years and only time will tell whether SPF
extensions to various MTA's will fall into that category. I think this
thread's been beaten to death; have fun with your evangelizing,
hopefully on a more applicable forum.

Mike Stone



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> No, I'm not.

You _weren't_ ignoring the point I just made and changing the subject?

Then, some villain apparently snuck into your MTA and substituted
different text that did, for the original message you tried to send.
You should sue!  ;->

> I'm pointing out that the world is more complicated than you seem to
> think.

You mean like having extra meanings of the term "vaporware", ones that
you alone are aware of?  OK.




Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone
On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 05:26:07PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
You mean like having extra meanings of the term "vaporware", ones that
you alone are aware of?  OK.
You're talking about SPF. That's a concept, not an implementation.
Effective use of SPF requires widespread adoption. Until/unless
widespread adoption happens the promises of SPF are vaporware. Pointing
to a bunch of implementations of SPF doesn't speak to whether it's been
widely adopted. There have been many failed implementations of many
forgotten concepts over the years and only time will tell whether SPF
extensions to various MTA's will fall into that category. I think this
thread's been beaten to death; have fun with your evangelizing,
hopefully on a more applicable forum.
Mike Stone
--
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> What name calling? There's a difference. 

  Cute.

Ah, well.

> You're assuming unrestricted outbound connections. Might even be true in
> your environment.

It's true that there will be interim problems with corporate firewalls
(etc.) closing off outbound access to 587/tcp (but allowing access to
25/tcp).  Should diminish over time.  I suppose that's why alternatives
like POP-before-SMTP persist.

[SRS references:]

> Not applicable. That requires not only a change on the part of the
> organization implementing SPF, but also a change at any location where a
> user wants to send mail. 

Not really, only relays.

On relay sites, implementation requires installing /usr/bin/srs (the
Perl Mail::SRS module) or equivalent, then using it as a wrapper for
.forward and /etc/alias entries.  Over the longer term, it may end up
being supported inline in MTAs.  Ditto for SPF itself.




Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Brett Carrington
On Sat, Jun 05, 2004 at 12:23:14AM +0200, Bernd Eckenfels wrote:
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote:
> > It's possible you're taking that fact into account:  I'd be curious to
> > hear how you (or others) are ensuring that such bounces go somewhere
> > appropriate.
> 
> Well, fisrt of all, I accept mail for outgoing relay only from verified
> sources, this includes SMTP AUTH or based on ip address. This is of course
> not 100% secure. And second, you should try to not generate bounces. This
> includes spam rejects, unknown mailboxes and virus alerts. All those must be
> rejcted on the smtp level. This is all one can do in his own local
> responsibility.
> 
> For backup MX or centralized mail gateways it is therefore a matter of good
> service to do all those rejections at the smtp level, which might involve
> replicated addressbooks or even pipelining.
> 
> A lot of organisations forget to include their backup mx into their mail
> concept and are the main reaons for bounce-floods caused by malware or
> faked-sender spam. (of course with open relays it does not help if you do
> not bounce, but those are note the biggest source of spam). Direct delivery
> from dialups or open proxies are much more common, at least for the large
> mail providers.
None of this (and the rest of the thread too, not picking on anyone in
particulary) has much to do with Debian-security. Pehaps there is a more
general place this thread can be taken.


pgpXDZTqUymGy.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone

On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 04:09:32PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

There's a line between advocacy and zealotry. 


Still stuck in name-calling mode?  Pity.


What name calling? There's a difference. 


It's fine for a home user to implement it quickly but it's not so easy
for a lot of large organizations that currently allow people to send
mail from offsite locations. 


Are there any remaining MUAs that can't support SASL?  Can't think of
any, offhand, but perhaps there are some.


You're assuming unrestricted outbound connections. Might even be true in
your environment.


The problem is even bigger when you consider that a lot of places are
blocking outbound smtp except through their own relays--which makes
the "just implement smtp auth" argument a bit harder to swallow.


http://spf.pobox.com/srs.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7328


Not applicable. That requires not only a change on the part of the
organization implementing SPF, but also a change at any location where a
user wants to send mail. I know, I know, the zealous answer would be
that everyone should just implement everything right now--but some of us
live in the real world.

Mike Stone



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone

On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 04:00:32PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

Not that I'm objecting, but I can't help noticing that you're ignoring
the point I just made, and changing the subject.  


No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that the world is more complicated than
you seem to think.

Mike Stone



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Azazel

> On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 11:38:02PM +0100, Azazel wrote:
> >Fair enough, but it's up to people like us to push it, surely?
>
> There's a line between advocacy and zealotry. At this point I'm not
> convinced that it's worth the effort. It's fine for a home user to
> implement it quickly but it's not so easy for a lot of large
> organizations that currently allow people to send mail from offsite
> locations. The problem is even bigger when you consider that a lot of
> places are blocking outbound smtp except through their own
> relays--which
> makes the "just implement smtp auth" argument a bit harder to swallow.


Oh, you're right.  I have SPF records for my domains, but I haven't
enabled it on my MTA, 'cause I'm not sure whether it's worth it yet.  I
do feel a degree of guilt about that though: SPF does have vulnerabili-
ties, but it's as good a solution as I've come across, and, if I just
trust to my Bayesian filter to keep my inbox clean, I'm not really
helping.  I was reading pobox.com's faq the other day, and the
impression that I got was that somebody somewhere is going to have to
make an effort at some point.  That point, however, is likely to turn
out to be something we can identify with hindsight and explain with
statistics.

J.
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> There's a line between advocacy and zealotry. 

Still stuck in name-calling mode?  Pity.

> It's fine for a home user to implement it quickly but it's not so easy
> for a lot of large organizations that currently allow people to send
> mail from offsite locations. 

Are there any remaining MUAs that can't support SASL?  Can't think of
any, offhand, but perhaps there are some.

In any event, nobody says you as an MTA admin ought to /dev/null mail
whose sending MX cannot be verified.  Your local policy might be to
merely subject those to more-careful checks, for example.

> The problem is even bigger when you consider that a lot of places are
> blocking outbound smtp except through their own relays--which makes
> the "just implement smtp auth" argument a bit harder to swallow.

http://spf.pobox.com/srs.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7328



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> yeah, aol's pleased as punch about it. they also don't have much
> interest in customers sending email with @aol from off their own system
> unless they use an obnoxious webmail client. same goes for hotmail.
> anyone with users who isn't aol and whose users don't particularly want
> a webmail client needs to give things more thought.

Not that I'm objecting, but I can't help noticing that you're ignoring
the point I just made, and changing the subject.  

> Well, I guess the spammers will have to use different addresses. That
> shouldn't take long.

That's where reputations schemes (RHSBLs, greylisting, etc.) come in.
See:  "Throwaway Domains" on http://spf.pobox.com/objections.html




Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone

On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 03:47:55PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

The utility of SPF lies in its ability to eliminate joe-jobbing,
providing a means to validate MXes -- and, as I'm reasonably sure you'll
have observed, forged mail's envelopes strongly tend to forge the
domains of major (very large) mail-handling sites.  Those sites happen
to have been among the earliest adopters of SPF RRs in their DNS,
largely because they are particularly motivated to protect their
trademarks and their names.


yeah, aol's pleased as punch about it. they also don't have much
interest in customers sending email with @aol from off their own system
unless they use an obnoxious webmail client. same goes for hotmail.
anyone with users who isn't aol and whose users don't particularly want
a webmail client needs to give things more thought.


So, adding handling for SPF RRs in one's MTA yields significant
advantages today, despite the technology being new, because _all_ of the 
forgemail claiming to be from aol.com, msn.com, hotmail.com, pobox.com,

etc. can be detected all in one step.


Well, I guess the spammers will have to use different addresses. That
shouldn't take long.

Mike Stone



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone

On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 11:38:02PM +0100, Azazel wrote:

Fair enough, but it's up to people like us to push it, surely?


There's a line between advocacy and zealotry. At this point I'm not
convinced that it's worth the effort. It's fine for a home user to
implement it quickly but it's not so easy for a lot of large
organizations that currently allow people to send mail from offsite
locations. The problem is even bigger when you consider that a lot of
places are blocking outbound smtp except through their own relays--which
makes the "just implement smtp auth" argument a bit harder to swallow.

Mike Stone



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> Well, it is vaporware. Until it's used by a noticable percentage of
> hosts, it's irrelevant.

(1) Where I come from, the term "vapourware" means software touted far
in advance of its availability.  As noted, such is most emphatically not
the case, here.  However, moving on:

(2) A relevant index for usefulness wouldn't be the percentage of
_hosts_, but rather the percentage of _mail_ for which it's useful.
This distinction is important:

The utility of SPF lies in its ability to eliminate joe-jobbing,
providing a means to validate MXes -- and, as I'm reasonably sure you'll
have observed, forged mail's envelopes strongly tend to forge the
domains of major (very large) mail-handling sites.  Those sites happen
to have been among the earliest adopters of SPF RRs in their DNS,
largely because they are particularly motivated to protect their
trademarks and their names.

So, adding handling for SPF RRs in one's MTA yields significant
advantages today, despite the technology being new, because _all_ of the 
forgemail claiming to be from aol.com, msn.com, hotmail.com, pobox.com,
etc. can be detected all in one step.

And that's a whole lot of spam, right there.




Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Bernd Eckenfels
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote:
> Why is SPF important?  Because it eliminates joe-jobs.  That is, it
> allows mail admins to absolutely validate the envelope return path --
> significant because spammers have recently gotten around to forging
> sender envelope information, allowing forged mail that appears to be
> credibly "from" your domain or mine, etc. -- and as such began defeating
> even quite good security regimes.

Solutions like yahoos DomainKeys  header signature is much better suited for
that, I  think.

http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys

Greetings
Bernd
-- 
eckes privat - http://www.eckes.org/
Project Freefire - http://www.freefire.org/



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Bernd Eckenfels
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote:
> It's possible you're taking that fact into account:  I'd be curious to
> hear how you (or others) are ensuring that such bounces go somewhere
> appropriate.

Well, fisrt of all, I accept mail for outgoing relay only from verified
sources, this includes SMTP AUTH or based on ip address. This is of course
not 100% secure. And second, you should try to not generate bounces. This
includes spam rejects, unknown mailboxes and virus alerts. All those must be
rejcted on the smtp level. This is all one can do in his own local
responsibility.

For backup MX or centralized mail gateways it is therefore a matter of good
service to do all those rejections at the smtp level, which might involve
replicated addressbooks or even pipelining.

A lot of organisations forget to include their backup mx into their mail
concept and are the main reaons for bounce-floods caused by malware or
faked-sender spam. (of course with open relays it does not help if you do
not bounce, but those are note the biggest source of spam). Direct delivery
from dialups or open proxies are much more common, at least for the large
mail providers.

Greetings
Bernd
-- 
eckes privat - http://www.eckes.org/
Project Freefire - http://www.freefire.org/



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Azazel

> That doesn't matter, unless a large enough fraction of people at both
> ends of smtp conversations actually use the stuff. An implementation
> that is not deployed is no more useful than a standard which isn't
> implemented.


Fair enough, but it's up to people like us to push it, surely?

J.
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> No, I'm not.

You _weren't_ ignoring the point I just made and changing the subject?

Then, some villain apparently snuck into your MTA and substituted
different text that did, for the original message you tried to send.
You should sue!  ;->

> I'm pointing out that the world is more complicated than you seem to
> think.

You mean like having extra meanings of the term "vaporware", ones that
you alone are aware of?  OK.



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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone

On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 11:50:09AM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

I'm surprised that an allegation that SPF -- highly relevant to SMTP
security -- is "vapourware", not to mention refutations of that
assertion, are off-topic.  Nonetheless, I apologise for reacting with
irritation to Michael's claim to that effect:  It's just that I expected
better from a Security Team member.  Much better.


Well, it is vaporware. Until it's used by a noticable percentage of
hosts, it's irrelevant. I've had spf records on my own domain for some
time, but that doesn't mean I believe that there is enough critical mass
behind the idea to actually make it useful. I'm not yet pushing for spf
records at my day job, for example, because there's not yet a benefit
which would justify the effort on that scale.


Why is it not "vapourware"?  Because prepackaged kits exist to trivially add
support to -=all=- of common MTAs:  Postfix, Exim, sendmail, qmail,
Courier-MTA, and MS-Exchange Server.  


That doesn't matter, unless a large enough fraction of people at both
ends of smtp conversations actually use the stuff. An implementation
that is not deployed is no more useful than a standard which isn't
implemented. 


Mike Stone



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> What name calling? There's a difference. 

  Cute.

Ah, well.

> You're assuming unrestricted outbound connections. Might even be true in
> your environment.

It's true that there will be interim problems with corporate firewalls
(etc.) closing off outbound access to 587/tcp (but allowing access to
25/tcp).  Should diminish over time.  I suppose that's why alternatives
like POP-before-SMTP persist.

[SRS references:]

> Not applicable. That requires not only a change on the part of the
> organization implementing SPF, but also a change at any location where a
> user wants to send mail. 

Not really, only relays.

On relay sites, implementation requires installing /usr/bin/srs (the
Perl Mail::SRS module) or equivalent, then using it as a wrapper for
.forward and /etc/alias entries.  Over the longer term, it may end up
being supported inline in MTAs.  Ditto for SPF itself.



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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Brett Carrington
On Sat, Jun 05, 2004 at 12:23:14AM +0200, Bernd Eckenfels wrote:
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote:
> > It's possible you're taking that fact into account:  I'd be curious to
> > hear how you (or others) are ensuring that such bounces go somewhere
> > appropriate.
> 
> Well, fisrt of all, I accept mail for outgoing relay only from verified
> sources, this includes SMTP AUTH or based on ip address. This is of course
> not 100% secure. And second, you should try to not generate bounces. This
> includes spam rejects, unknown mailboxes and virus alerts. All those must be
> rejcted on the smtp level. This is all one can do in his own local
> responsibility.
> 
> For backup MX or centralized mail gateways it is therefore a matter of good
> service to do all those rejections at the smtp level, which might involve
> replicated addressbooks or even pipelining.
> 
> A lot of organisations forget to include their backup mx into their mail
> concept and are the main reaons for bounce-floods caused by malware or
> faked-sender spam. (of course with open relays it does not help if you do
> not bounce, but those are note the biggest source of spam). Direct delivery
> from dialups or open proxies are much more common, at least for the large
> mail providers.
None of this (and the rest of the thread too, not picking on anyone in
particulary) has much to do with Debian-security. Pehaps there is a more
general place this thread can be taken.


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Description: PGP signature


Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone
On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 04:09:32PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
There's a line between advocacy and zealotry. 
Still stuck in name-calling mode?  Pity.
What name calling? There's a difference. 

It's fine for a home user to implement it quickly but it's not so easy
for a lot of large organizations that currently allow people to send
mail from offsite locations. 
Are there any remaining MUAs that can't support SASL?  Can't think of
any, offhand, but perhaps there are some.
You're assuming unrestricted outbound connections. Might even be true in
your environment.
The problem is even bigger when you consider that a lot of places are
blocking outbound smtp except through their own relays--which makes
the "just implement smtp auth" argument a bit harder to swallow.
http://spf.pobox.com/srs.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7328
Not applicable. That requires not only a change on the part of the
organization implementing SPF, but also a change at any location where a
user wants to send mail. I know, I know, the zealous answer would be
that everyone should just implement everything right now--but some of us
live in the real world.
Mike Stone
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone
On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 04:00:32PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
Not that I'm objecting, but I can't help noticing that you're ignoring
the point I just made, and changing the subject.  
No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that the world is more complicated than
you seem to think.
Mike Stone
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Azazel

> On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 11:38:02PM +0100, Azazel wrote:
> >Fair enough, but it's up to people like us to push it, surely?
>
> There's a line between advocacy and zealotry. At this point I'm not
> convinced that it's worth the effort. It's fine for a home user to
> implement it quickly but it's not so easy for a lot of large
> organizations that currently allow people to send mail from offsite
> locations. The problem is even bigger when you consider that a lot of
> places are blocking outbound smtp except through their own
> relays--which
> makes the "just implement smtp auth" argument a bit harder to swallow.


Oh, you're right.  I have SPF records for my domains, but I haven't
enabled it on my MTA, 'cause I'm not sure whether it's worth it yet.  I
do feel a degree of guilt about that though: SPF does have vulnerabili-
ties, but it's as good a solution as I've come across, and, if I just
trust to my Bayesian filter to keep my inbox clean, I'm not really
helping.  I was reading pobox.com's faq the other day, and the
impression that I got was that somebody somewhere is going to have to
make an effort at some point.  That point, however, is likely to turn
out to be something we can identify with hindsight and explain with
statistics.

J.
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> There's a line between advocacy and zealotry. 

Still stuck in name-calling mode?  Pity.

> It's fine for a home user to implement it quickly but it's not so easy
> for a lot of large organizations that currently allow people to send
> mail from offsite locations. 

Are there any remaining MUAs that can't support SASL?  Can't think of
any, offhand, but perhaps there are some.

In any event, nobody says you as an MTA admin ought to /dev/null mail
whose sending MX cannot be verified.  Your local policy might be to
merely subject those to more-careful checks, for example.

> The problem is even bigger when you consider that a lot of places are
> blocking outbound smtp except through their own relays--which makes
> the "just implement smtp auth" argument a bit harder to swallow.

http://spf.pobox.com/srs.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7328


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> yeah, aol's pleased as punch about it. they also don't have much
> interest in customers sending email with @aol from off their own system
> unless they use an obnoxious webmail client. same goes for hotmail.
> anyone with users who isn't aol and whose users don't particularly want
> a webmail client needs to give things more thought.

Not that I'm objecting, but I can't help noticing that you're ignoring
the point I just made, and changing the subject.  

> Well, I guess the spammers will have to use different addresses. That
> shouldn't take long.

That's where reputations schemes (RHSBLs, greylisting, etc.) come in.
See:  "Throwaway Domains" on http://spf.pobox.com/objections.html



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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone
On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 03:47:55PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
The utility of SPF lies in its ability to eliminate joe-jobbing,
providing a means to validate MXes -- and, as I'm reasonably sure you'll
have observed, forged mail's envelopes strongly tend to forge the
domains of major (very large) mail-handling sites.  Those sites happen
to have been among the earliest adopters of SPF RRs in their DNS,
largely because they are particularly motivated to protect their
trademarks and their names.
yeah, aol's pleased as punch about it. they also don't have much
interest in customers sending email with @aol from off their own system
unless they use an obnoxious webmail client. same goes for hotmail.
anyone with users who isn't aol and whose users don't particularly want
a webmail client needs to give things more thought.
So, adding handling for SPF RRs in one's MTA yields significant
advantages today, despite the technology being new, because _all_ of the 
forgemail claiming to be from aol.com, msn.com, hotmail.com, pobox.com,
etc. can be detected all in one step.
Well, I guess the spammers will have to use different addresses. That
shouldn't take long.
Mike Stone
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone
On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 11:38:02PM +0100, Azazel wrote:
Fair enough, but it's up to people like us to push it, surely?
There's a line between advocacy and zealotry. At this point I'm not
convinced that it's worth the effort. It's fine for a home user to
implement it quickly but it's not so easy for a lot of large
organizations that currently allow people to send mail from offsite
locations. The problem is even bigger when you consider that a lot of
places are blocking outbound smtp except through their own relays--which
makes the "just implement smtp auth" argument a bit harder to swallow.
Mike Stone
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> Well, it is vaporware. Until it's used by a noticable percentage of
> hosts, it's irrelevant.

(1) Where I come from, the term "vapourware" means software touted far
in advance of its availability.  As noted, such is most emphatically not
the case, here.  However, moving on:

(2) A relevant index for usefulness wouldn't be the percentage of
_hosts_, but rather the percentage of _mail_ for which it's useful.
This distinction is important:

The utility of SPF lies in its ability to eliminate joe-jobbing,
providing a means to validate MXes -- and, as I'm reasonably sure you'll
have observed, forged mail's envelopes strongly tend to forge the
domains of major (very large) mail-handling sites.  Those sites happen
to have been among the earliest adopters of SPF RRs in their DNS,
largely because they are particularly motivated to protect their
trademarks and their names.

So, adding handling for SPF RRs in one's MTA yields significant
advantages today, despite the technology being new, because _all_ of the 
forgemail claiming to be from aol.com, msn.com, hotmail.com, pobox.com,
etc. can be detected all in one step.

And that's a whole lot of spam, right there.



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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Bernd Eckenfels
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote:
> Why is SPF important?  Because it eliminates joe-jobs.  That is, it
> allows mail admins to absolutely validate the envelope return path --
> significant because spammers have recently gotten around to forging
> sender envelope information, allowing forged mail that appears to be
> credibly "from" your domain or mine, etc. -- and as such began defeating
> even quite good security regimes.

Solutions like yahoos DomainKeys  header signature is much better suited for
that, I  think.

http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys

Greetings
Bernd
-- 
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Project Freefire - http://www.freefire.org/


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Bernd Eckenfels
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote:
> It's possible you're taking that fact into account:  I'd be curious to
> hear how you (or others) are ensuring that such bounces go somewhere
> appropriate.

Well, fisrt of all, I accept mail for outgoing relay only from verified
sources, this includes SMTP AUTH or based on ip address. This is of course
not 100% secure. And second, you should try to not generate bounces. This
includes spam rejects, unknown mailboxes and virus alerts. All those must be
rejcted on the smtp level. This is all one can do in his own local
responsibility.

For backup MX or centralized mail gateways it is therefore a matter of good
service to do all those rejections at the smtp level, which might involve
replicated addressbooks or even pipelining.

A lot of organisations forget to include their backup mx into their mail
concept and are the main reaons for bounce-floods caused by malware or
faked-sender spam. (of course with open relays it does not help if you do
not bounce, but those are note the biggest source of spam). Direct delivery
from dialups or open proxies are much more common, at least for the large
mail providers.

Greetings
Bernd
-- 
eckes privat - http://www.eckes.org/
Project Freefire - http://www.freefire.org/


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Azazel

> That doesn't matter, unless a large enough fraction of people at both
> ends of smtp conversations actually use the stuff. An implementation
> that is not deployed is no more useful than a standard which isn't
> implemented.


Fair enough, but it's up to people like us to push it, surely?

J.
--
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Michael Stone
On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 11:50:09AM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
I'm surprised that an allegation that SPF -- highly relevant to SMTP
security -- is "vapourware", not to mention refutations of that
assertion, are off-topic.  Nonetheless, I apologise for reacting with
irritation to Michael's claim to that effect:  It's just that I expected
better from a Security Team member.  Much better.
Well, it is vaporware. Until it's used by a noticable percentage of
hosts, it's irrelevant. I've had spf records on my own domain for some
time, but that doesn't mean I believe that there is enough critical mass
behind the idea to actually make it useful. I'm not yet pushing for spf
records at my day job, for example, because there's not yet a benefit
which would justify the effort on that scale.
Why is it not "vapourware"?  Because prepackaged kits exist to trivially add
support to -=all=- of common MTAs:  Postfix, Exim, sendmail, qmail,
Courier-MTA, and MS-Exchange Server.  
That doesn't matter, unless a large enough fraction of people at both
ends of smtp conversations actually use the stuff. An implementation
that is not deployed is no more useful than a standard which isn't
implemented. 

Mike Stone
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Phillip Hofmeister ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> While I am sure finding out whose is bigger is exciting to you.  I
> feel comfortable in speaking for the rest of the list when I say this
> thread has become WAY OT.  

I'm surprised that an allegation that SPF -- highly relevant to SMTP
security -- is "vapourware", not to mention refutations of that
assertion, are off-topic.  Nonetheless, I apologise for reacting with
irritation to Michael's claim to that effect:  It's just that I expected
better from a Security Team member.  Much better.

Why is SPF important?  Because it eliminates joe-jobs.  That is, it
allows mail admins to absolutely validate the envelope return path --
significant because spammers have recently gotten around to forging
sender envelope information, allowing forged mail that appears to be
credibly "from" your domain or mine, etc. -- and as such began defeating
even quite good security regimes.

Why is it not "vapourware"?  Because prepackaged kits exist to trivially add
support to -=all=- of common MTAs:  Postfix, Exim, sendmail, qmail,
Courier-MTA, and MS-Exchange Server.  I posted the link twice earlier in
the conversation, well before Michael dismissed it as "vapourware".
Here it is again:  

http://spf.pobox.com/downloads.html

If using Exim4 on Debian, the required daemon (perl module
Mail::SPF::Query) is available as Debian package libmail-spf-query-perl .
The Exim4 ACL that invokes it can be found on the above-cited page, and
a SysVInit script can be pulled down from http://www.jcdigita.com/eximconfig/ .

If all that's vapourware, then it's amazing how much functional and
well-debugged vapourware can be located in three minutes of googling.




Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Bernd Eckenfels ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> If you relay mail  from your customers, you have to deliver them their
> bounces if they spam. 

Well, that's the trick, isn't it?  If they're sending spam (either
deliberately or -- much more likely of late -- because customer hosts have
been zombified by malware), then the sender addresses and (of late)
the envelope return path will almost certainly be forged.

It's possible you're taking that fact into account:  I'd be curious to
hear how you (or others) are ensuring that such bounces go somewhere
appropriate.



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Phillip Hofmeister ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> While I am sure finding out whose is bigger is exciting to you.  I
> feel comfortable in speaking for the rest of the list when I say this
> thread has become WAY OT.  

I'm surprised that an allegation that SPF -- highly relevant to SMTP
security -- is "vapourware", not to mention refutations of that
assertion, are off-topic.  Nonetheless, I apologise for reacting with
irritation to Michael's claim to that effect:  It's just that I expected
better from a Security Team member.  Much better.

Why is SPF important?  Because it eliminates joe-jobs.  That is, it
allows mail admins to absolutely validate the envelope return path --
significant because spammers have recently gotten around to forging
sender envelope information, allowing forged mail that appears to be
credibly "from" your domain or mine, etc. -- and as such began defeating
even quite good security regimes.

Why is it not "vapourware"?  Because prepackaged kits exist to trivially add
support to -=all=- of common MTAs:  Postfix, Exim, sendmail, qmail,
Courier-MTA, and MS-Exchange Server.  I posted the link twice earlier in
the conversation, well before Michael dismissed it as "vapourware".
Here it is again:  

http://spf.pobox.com/downloads.html

If using Exim4 on Debian, the required daemon (perl module
Mail::SPF::Query) is available as Debian package libmail-spf-query-perl .
The Exim4 ACL that invokes it can be found on the above-cited page, and
a SysVInit script can be pulled down from http://www.jcdigita.com/eximconfig/ .

If all that's vapourware, then it's amazing how much functional and
well-debugged vapourware can be located in three minutes of googling.



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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-04 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Bernd Eckenfels ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> If you relay mail  from your customers, you have to deliver them their
> bounces if they spam. 

Well, that's the trick, isn't it?  If they're sending spam (either
deliberately or -- much more likely of late -- because customer hosts have
been zombified by malware), then the sender addresses and (of late)
the envelope return path will almost certainly be forged.

It's possible you're taking that fact into account:  I'd be curious to
hear how you (or others) are ensuring that such bounces go somewhere
appropriate.


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread Phillip Hofmeister
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, 03 Jun 2004 at 07:26:30PM -0400, s. keeling wrote:
> > Let me warn you.  Bogofilter requires training a database.  You may not
> 
> Much appreciated.  That prompted me to read the man page before I let
> it bite me.  :-)

NP.

> > handful of a few hundred spam messages and a few hundred ham messages to
> > shoot at it right away.  use cat to pipe the messages/MBOX files through
> > bogofilter -n and bogofilter -s.
> 
> That would be "bogofilter -Mn < ~/Mail/spam" for mbox style, no?

Yes, the -M option would indicate to bogo that this is an MBOX.

> > If you are interested I can try bzip2ing my wordlist.db and sending it
> > to you via http.  Email me off-list if you would like this.  This
> 
> Again, much appreciated.  I'll just start banging my head on it and
> see what I can come up with.

You can visit http://www.spamarchive.org/ and download other people's
spam to train your filters .

Warning: Just throwing a bunch of spam at your filters w/o giving it any
ham will likely result in falsely high bogosity scores (false-rejects)
since there is no ham tokens to reduce the score.

HTH,

- -- 
Phillip Hofmeister

PGP/GPG Key:
http://www.zionlth.org/~plhofmei/
wget -O - http://www.zionlth.org/~plhofmei/key.asc | gpg --import
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Key available at http://www.zionlth.org/~plhofmei/key.asc

iD8DBQFAv+OsS3Jybf3L5MQRAjjpAJ4q5u3JQ10jx8Ey/g2XF8ncTFvU8gCcCQaz
53qpMlf3kiA4Hfgvl8uyRCs=
=wJAI
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Phillip Hofmeister
While I am sure finding out whose is bigger is exciting to you.  I
feel comfortable in speaking for the rest of the list when I say this
thread has become WAY OT.  Please mark it as such (in the subject)
or take your discussion elsewhere.

Thanks

On Thu, 03 Jun 2004 at 09:11:57PM -0400, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> 
> > On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 05:32:17PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> > >Was there a particular part of the immediately preceding reference to
> > >SPF that you didn't get, or was it the concept as a whole?
> > 
> > I get the concept of vaporware. Seen a lot of it over the years.
> 
> Sorry to hear about your sysadmin shortage, then.
> 
> -- 
> Cheers,
> Rick MoenBu^so^stopu min per kulero.  
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
> 

-- 
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread s. keeling
Incoming from Bernd Eckenfels:
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote:
> > Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
> > to/from our customers?
> 
> If you relay mail  from your customers, you have to deliver them their
> bounces if they spam. If you relay to your customers you better make sure

What?!?  If they spam, you cut them off, surely!  And charge their
credit card for cleanup costs!!


-- 
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(*)   http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling 
- -



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread s. keeling
Incoming from Michael Stone:
> 
> It's not misbehaving to generate a bounce message. Glad I could clear
> that up.

s/bounce/valid bounce/

You're welcome.


-- 
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(*)   http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling 
- -



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread s. keeling
Incoming from Alvin Oga:
> On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, s. keeling wrote:
> 
> personal email .. you can proably reject alll html emails
> and whitelist all your friends that are sending html emails

... Assuming you can see into the future and can predict where all
your future mail will be coming from.  That's an impossible
assumption.  I get personal replies from Usenet, from debian-*, from
headhunters, from friends of my friends, from people I've never heard
of who landed on my homepage, ...

I'm sick of whitelisting.  It doesn't work if you care about
communicating with people you've never met.

Besides, the simple way to deal with html is with mutt and a .mailcap:

  text/html; /usr/bin/w3m -dump %s; copiousoutput; nametemplate=%s.html


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess - recipients

2004-06-03 Thread Alvin Oga

hi ya blu

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Blu wrote:

> I agree, but it was suggested that any mail server should reject spam at
> SMTP time, and not bounce it at all.

yupp ... best to do at smtp time

> If my relay server (not open, but
> relay for customers) has no means to verify recipients, what to do when the
> destination server rejects that mail already accepted by my server?.

make it part of your overall services and policy, that you require a 
list of authorized users  .. if you dont know about [EMAIL PROTECTED]
than you will consider it a forged acct

- you now have a list of all valid email accounts and 
any unknown address is rejected/bounced/fried/devnulled
( the users does NOT have to have a shell acct ... 
( gazillion ways to do this

- you reject unknown users on incoming email addressed to joe
- you reject outgoing mail from "joe"
( ez to do with wireless laptops )

- and if joe is using a borrowed laptop from the spouse
or sitting at a different office pc ... humm .. more isssues
 
> Bounce.

back.

c ya
alvin



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Bernd Eckenfels
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote:
> Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
> to/from our customers?

If you relay mail  from your customers, you have to deliver them their
bounces if they spam. If you relay to your customers you better make sure
the backup mx is trying to pipeline the mail to the primary and also forward
the reject in case of spam or inapropriate destination.

But thats quite normal mail setup, nowadays.

Greetings
Bernd
-- 
eckes privat - http://www.eckes.org/
Project Freefire - http://www.freefire.org/



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 05:32:17PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> >Was there a particular part of the immediately preceding reference to
> >SPF that you didn't get, or was it the concept as a whole?
> 
> I get the concept of vaporware. Seen a lot of it over the years.

Sorry to hear about your sysadmin shortage, then.

-- 
Cheers,
Rick MoenBu^so^stopu min per kulero.  
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> The end result is the same in a lot of cases.

I'm sorry, what part of "fixing local problems first, and understanding
the scope of one's responsibility" are you not quite getting?

> The point is that you shouldn't take a holier-than-thou attitude about
> when people should send bounces.

I merely note that sending bounces of forged spam is a bad thing, for
perfectly obvious reasons, and personally take measures to prevent being
guilty of doing so.

Moreover, I treat sites that visit that upon me in significant amounts
as spam sources, regardless of their excuses.  I'm sorry you don't like
that.  Your opinion is noted and duly ignored.

> In the case of viruses, when it's unequivocal that a message is
> garbage you should just drop it on the floor.

I'd much rather refuse it.  For:

> If you're going to take any kind of action to reject the message,
> OTOH, you've got the possibility of a bounce going to the wrong
> person.

Sorry, this is a dementedly wrong notion of responsibility.  Refusing
the mail doesn't generate a bounce message; it just refuses it.  I am
not going to take responsibility for someone else's misbehaviour (e.g.,
an upstream MTA).

If the other site is sufficiently obnoxious in its behaviour, it's
likely to end up getting whapped hard, in ways beyond mere refusal.  

> That's life until there's a system in place for validating envelope
> addresses. SPF may or may not be that way in the future. At the moment
> it is not.

1.  Irrelevant to the question of responsibility.
2.  Speak for yourself.  I do implement SPF.  Please see earlier 
citations for implementation details, if interested.

> It's not misbehaving to generate a bounce message. Glad I could clear
> that up.

Send out "bounce messages" [sic] of forged mail in sufficiently large
numbers, and you're likely to end up being treated as a spam source.
That's a fact.  Deal.




Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:24:35PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> >One can pretend that the matter's open for debate, but that would be a
> >waste of time:  It's happening.
> 
> Sure it is. How do you manage to sleep, fixing all the email systems in
> the world *and* evangelizing at the same time? Must be tough.

(Troll duly noted and ignored.)

> >People who put significant stock in content-based filtering are pursuing
> >a losing antispam strategy.  
> 
> All antispam strategies are a losing strategy, unless you're a zealot
> who believes that everyone else in the world (and human nature) will
> change. 

My, you _are_ a veritable fount of non-perspective, aren't you?

Some antispam strategies are by relative measures non-starters relative
to others.  In particular, doing all of your primary processing via
content-based filtering, particularly at the MDA/MUA level, has proven
over time to be particularly ineffective, and tempts people to do dumb
things like /dev/nulling all HTML mail.

> Every time you come up with a new fix someone else will come up
> with a new strategy to avoid it. What's your strategy to cope with
> perfectly valid smtp messages that just happen to contain spam?

DNSBLs, collaborative detection, and several measures that include
Bayesian recognition during SMTP time as a _secondary_ measure.  (Was
there a particular part of the word "primary" that you didn't get,
earlier?)

Ultimately, it would be good to collectively whitelist IPs that show
willingness to be responsible for mail they send, and bandwidth-throttle
others.  There are proposals being worked on for this.  See, for example: 
http://www.templetons.com/brad/spam/endspam.html

> >They'll probably figure that out by themselves, eventually.  In either
> >case, not my problem.
> 
> Yet you can't seem to stop making it your problem. Curious.

What part of my describing strictly local measures, and insisting that
other people's misbehaviour is their problem, were you not quite
understanding?



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Michael Stone

On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 05:32:17PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

Was there a particular part of the immediately preceding reference to
SPF that you didn't get, or was it the concept as a whole?


I get the concept of vaporware. Seen a lot of it over the years.

Mike Stone



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Michael Stone

On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 05:29:25PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

Earlier, I mentioned (to summarise and review) that I take care to have
my MTA reject mail it considers inherently objectionable on various
grounds, as a superior alternative to performing such processing after
acceptance.  (Among other things, it allows my system to say "no"
without being guilty of generating bogus bounces to forged addresses.)

Mr. Stone then opined that he saw no advantage because an upstream MTA
might (e.g., if it was a relay) react to my 55X Reject by issuing a
bogus bounce of its own.


The end result is the same in a lot of cases. The point is that you
shouldn't take a holier-than-thou attitude about when people should send
bounces. In the case of viruses, when it's unequivocal that a message is
garbage you should just drop it on the floor. If you're going to take
any kind of action to reject the message, OTOH, you've got the
possibility of a bounce going to the wrong person. That's life until
there's a system in place for validating envelope addresses. SPF may or
may not be that way in the future. At the moment it is not.


I've heard this sort of comment before from people who really ought to
know better, and who actually _do_ understand the concept of local
responsibility.  Maybe they're bored and are trolling; it's difficult to
say.  Or maybe they're just following the ever-popular philosophy of
post first, think later.

To spell it out, I'm responsible for making sure _my_ MTA isn't
misbehaving.  I'm not responsible for _your_ MTA misbehaving.


It's not misbehaving to generate a bounce message. Glad I could clear
that up.

Mike Stone



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread Phillip Hofmeister
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, 03 Jun 2004 at 07:26:30PM -0400, s. keeling wrote:
> > Let me warn you.  Bogofilter requires training a database.  You may not
> 
> Much appreciated.  That prompted me to read the man page before I let
> it bite me.  :-)

NP.

> > handful of a few hundred spam messages and a few hundred ham messages to
> > shoot at it right away.  use cat to pipe the messages/MBOX files through
> > bogofilter -n and bogofilter -s.
> 
> That would be "bogofilter -Mn < ~/Mail/spam" for mbox style, no?

Yes, the -M option would indicate to bogo that this is an MBOX.

> > If you are interested I can try bzip2ing my wordlist.db and sending it
> > to you via http.  Email me off-list if you would like this.  This
> 
> Again, much appreciated.  I'll just start banging my head on it and
> see what I can come up with.

You can visit http://www.spamarchive.org/ and download other people's
spam to train your filters .

Warning: Just throwing a bunch of spam at your filters w/o giving it any
ham will likely result in falsely high bogosity scores (false-rejects)
since there is no ham tokens to reduce the score.

HTH,

- -- 
Phillip Hofmeister

PGP/GPG Key:
http://www.zionlth.org/~plhofmei/
wget -O - http://www.zionlth.org/~plhofmei/key.asc | gpg --import
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Key available at http://www.zionlth.org/~plhofmei/key.asc

iD8DBQFAv+OsS3Jybf3L5MQRAjjpAJ4q5u3JQ10jx8Ey/g2XF8ncTFvU8gCcCQaz
53qpMlf3kiA4Hfgvl8uyRCs=
=wJAI
-END PGP SIGNATURE-


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Phillip Hofmeister
While I am sure finding out whose is bigger is exciting to you.  I
feel comfortable in speaking for the rest of the list when I say this
thread has become WAY OT.  Please mark it as such (in the subject)
or take your discussion elsewhere.

Thanks

On Thu, 03 Jun 2004 at 09:11:57PM -0400, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> 
> > On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 05:32:17PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> > >Was there a particular part of the immediately preceding reference to
> > >SPF that you didn't get, or was it the concept as a whole?
> > 
> > I get the concept of vaporware. Seen a lot of it over the years.
> 
> Sorry to hear about your sysadmin shortage, then.
> 
> -- 
> Cheers,
> Rick MoenBu^so^stopu min per kulero.  
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
> 

-- 
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Blu ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> If my relay server (not open, but relay for customers) has no means to
> verify recipients, what to do when the destination server rejects that
> mail already accepted by my server?.  Bounce.

(Implicit assumption that you have no option but to accept forged-sender
spam noted without further comment.)

Well, you will increasingly find your MTA put on a "teergrube this
chump" list, if it keeps doing that.  I'm not telling you what to do;
I'm just predicting what's going to happen.  In your shoes, out of
self-interest, I'd work at making my system behave like that as little
as possible.




Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Alvin Oga

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Blu wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:34:44PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

> > Do I win a prize, 

yup :-)

> or was that just a qualifying round, and the real
> > questions, that actually require thinking, will come later?
> 
> Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
> to/from our customers?

you're taking it too far dude ... 
violating common sense and assumptions is a bad thing ;-)

i think the "reject mail from open relay" is a good thing
and is totally different than "relay your own or customers mail"

c ya
alvin



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> I'm sure the guy who got joe jobbed is happy that you can point out the
> source of his misforture. Must be real comforting and all.

Was there a particular part of the immediately preceding reference to
SPF that you didn't get, or was it the concept as a whole?

(Kid, I was in the thick of the eponymous incident on NANAE when Joe
Doll got hit.  You have nothing to teach me about joe-jobs.)



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Blu
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 05:16:10PM -0700, Alvin Oga wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Blu wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:34:44PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> 
> > > Do I win a prize, 
> 
> yup :-)
> 
> > or was that just a qualifying round, and the real
> > > questions, that actually require thinking, will come later?
> > 
> > Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
> > to/from our customers?
> 
> you're taking it too far dude ... 
> violating common sense and assumptions is a bad thing ;-)
> 
> i think the "reject mail from open relay" is a good thing
> and is totally different than "relay your own or customers mail"

I agree, but it was suggested that any mail server should reject spam at
SMTP time, and not bounce it at all. If my relay server (not open, but
relay for customers) has no means to verify recipients, what to do when the
destination server rejects that mail already accepted by my server?.
Bounce.

Blu.



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Blu ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
> to/from our customers?

I'm quite non-plussed at this question, since it seems to suggest that you
weren't following the thread.

Earlier, I mentioned (to summarise and review) that I take care to have
my MTA reject mail it considers inherently objectionable on various
grounds, as a superior alternative to performing such processing after
acceptance.  (Among other things, it allows my system to say "no"
without being guilty of generating bogus bounces to forged addresses.)

Mr. Stone then opined that he saw no advantage because an upstream MTA
might (e.g., if it was a relay) react to my 55X Reject by issuing a
bogus bounce of its own.

I've heard this sort of comment before from people who really ought to
know better, and who actually _do_ understand the concept of local
responsibility.  Maybe they're bored and are trolling; it's difficult to
say.  Or maybe they're just following the ever-popular philosophy of
post first, think later.

To spell it out, I'm responsible for making sure _my_ MTA isn't
misbehaving.  I'm not responsible for _your_ MTA misbehaving.

If some upstream MTA (such as, hypothetically, yours) decides to take do
something irresponsible and socially destructive (such as sending spam
to a forged alleged sender) in reaction to my MTA saying "No, I don't
accept that mail", then that _other_ MTA's admin is accountable for
_his_ system's misbehaviour, and I hope and expect that we will all
(figuratively) LART him until he bleeds.

Now, if that MTA's admin says "Hey, I'm not responsible; I'm just a poor
innocent relay", I'd say he'd better get accustomed to being accountable
for mail his system sends out, since other admins _are_ clear on that
point, even if he isn't.  If the admin has no other way of making sure 
his system doesn't incontinently issue bogus "bounce" messages to forged
addresses when spam/malware is refused downstream, then he'd be well
advised to improve his _own_ ability to reject bogus mail, making its
subsequent relaying a non-issue.

Please also (since you're a relay) read the prior posted links about
SRS.




Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread Michael Stone

On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:24:35PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

One can pretend that the matter's open for debate, but that would be a
waste of time:  It's happening.


Sure it is. How do you manage to sleep, fixing all the email systems in
the world *and* evangelizing at the same time? Must be tough.


People who put significant stock in content-based filtering are pursuing
a losing antispam strategy.  


All antispam strategies are a losing strategy, unless you're a zealot
who believes that everyone else in the world (and human nature) will
change. Every time you come up with a new fix someone else will come up
with a new strategy to avoid it. What's your strategy to cope with
perfectly valid smtp messages that just happen to contain spam?


They'll probably figure that out by themselves, eventually.  In either
case, not my problem.


Yet you can't seem to stop making it your problem. Curious.

Mike Stone



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread Alvin Oga


On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, s. keeling wrote:

> I actually meant the typical "worst practices" for which spammers are
> so well known.  Spammers use these things to avoid detection.  Average

maybe we should reject misspelled email subject lines :-)

> users do them without even realizing it.  For instance, Alvin
> automatically deep-sixes html mail.  

> Ordinary users don't even know when they're sending html mails.

corp users dont care or need to care where incoming business mails
are coming from in whatever format and languages ( and *.tld )
- lot harder to define spam in a corp environment

personal email .. you can proably reject alll html emails
and whitelist all your friends that are sending html emails

> 
> No, it was just an example since Alvin mentioned it. 

because html based email is the devil ... carrying spam and virii :-)
and most people dont care that they send text and html emails

> Uhh, what?  My original starting point in all this was to find out if
> Alvin's suggestions had merit.

has merit only if you agree with the strict or dumb antispam rules
and conversely, a bad set of rules if one doesnt agree with it

>  Following on that, what would it take to implement them?

some of the typical antispam rules are 5 minutes to solve, solved
once for everybody ...

>  My favourite admin is loathe to do _anything_ that
> could cause his users to complain of lost mail.  How he cuts out the
> %60-%80 of crap without causing a riot is all I wanted to know.

lost emails is a bad thing ... nobody likes to be told they
didnt get their emails

> BTW, regarding "2." above.  Remember the days when there was such
> reticence on the part of Sendmail's maintainers to actually change
> Sendmail to comply with RFCs?  It was pretty well a given then that
> doing so would turn half the planet dark overnight because so many
> admins were still running Sendmail versions that had been obsoleted
> years before.

things should go dark .. so that one understands what a bigger
hole we're digging, but its too late now ... 

c ya
alvin



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Michael Stone

On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:34:44PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

Gee, I guess that relay should have rejected the spam instead of relaying
it, right?  Then, it wouldn't feel a compulsion to issue a completely
inappropriate "bounce" [sic] message to a forged sender.


I'm sure the guy who got joe jobbed is happy that you can point out the
source of his misforture. Must be real comforting and all.


Do I win a prize, or was that just a qualifying round, and the real
questions, that actually require thinking, will come later?


I'm not sure you'd qualify for the thinking round. Seems like you're
just a big ball of spam hating fury, no?

Mike Stone



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread s. keeling
Incoming from Bernd Eckenfels:
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote:
> > Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
> > to/from our customers?
> 
> If you relay mail  from your customers, you have to deliver them their
> bounces if they spam. If you relay to your customers you better make sure

What?!?  If they spam, you cut them off, surely!  And charge their
credit card for cleanup costs!!


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread s. keeling
Incoming from Michael Stone:
> 
> It's not misbehaving to generate a bounce message. Glad I could clear
> that up.

s/bounce/valid bounce/

You're welcome.


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Blu
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:34:44PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> 
> > Yeah, big difference. If the spam is going through a relay, the relay
> > will send the same bounce and the same person will get the bounce
> > message. 
> 
> Oh, oh!  
> 
> Gee, I guess that relay should have rejected the spam instead of relaying
> it, right?  Then, it wouldn't feel a compulsion to issue a completely
> inappropriate "bounce" [sic] message to a forged sender.
> 
> Do I win a prize, or was that just a qualifying round, and the real
> questions, that actually require thinking, will come later?

Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
to/from our customers?

Blu.



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> Yeah, big difference. If the spam is going through a relay, the relay
> will send the same bounce and the same person will get the bounce
> message. 

Oh, oh!  

Gee, I guess that relay should have rejected the spam instead of relaying
it, right?  Then, it wouldn't feel a compulsion to issue a completely
inappropriate "bounce" [sic] message to a forged sender.

Do I win a prize, or was that just a qualifying round, and the real
questions, that actually require thinking, will come later?




Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread s. keeling
Incoming from Phillip Hofmeister:
> On Thu, 03 Jun 2004 at 04:10:30PM -0400, s. keeling wrote:
> > > I don't use spamassisin, just bogofilter.  Here is my relevant
> > > procmailrc snippet...
> > 
> > Downloading it now, thanks.  Hopefully this gets me back to a
> > maintainable system without all the exception handling, whitelisting,
> 
> Let me warn you.  Bogofilter requires training a database.  You may not

Much appreciated.  That prompted me to read the man page before I let
it bite me.  :-)

> handful of a few hundred spam messages and a few hundred ham messages to
> shoot at it right away.  use cat to pipe the messages/MBOX files through
> bogofilter -n and bogofilter -s.

That would be "bogofilter -Mn < ~/Mail/spam" for mbox style, no?

> If you are interested I can try bzip2ing my wordlist.db and sending it
> to you via http.  Email me off-list if you would like this.  This

Again, much appreciated.  I'll just start banging my head on it and
see what I can come up with.


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Michael Stone

On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 03:23:51PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

However, if your system is able to determine _during the SMTP session_
that the mail is unwanted (as spam or for some other reason), it can
issue a 55X Reject error and refuse delivery, instead of accepting the
mail and then having to make the poor choice between /dev/nulling the
received mail and issuing an almost certainly inappropriate bounce
message.


Yeah, big difference. If the spam is going through a relay, the relay
will send the same bounce and the same person will get the bounce
message. 


Mike Stone



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting s. keeling ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> I actually meant the typical "worst practices" for which spammers are
> so well known.  Spammers use these things to avoid detection.  Average
> users do them without even realizing it.

Thanks for clarifying.

Yes, this is an excellent point:  Spammers lean towards the dodgy side
of mail standards in order to better avoid being tracked down and for
other reasons.  Reasserting control of the SMTP stream is going to
require enforcing RFC requirements that have traditionally been laxly
applied, and also enforcing a couple of other standards that are
currently de-facto.

This will entail temporary problems for sites and users that have become
dependent on badly set up MUAs and MTAs -- in exactly the same way they
used to be with open relays.  

One can pretend that the matter's open for debate, but that would be a
waste of time:  It's happening.

> For instance, Alvin automatically deep-sixes html mail.

Noted.  The practice strikes me as a bit silly.  Moreover (if I
understand your recounting of that policy), unlike with SMTP-time
rejection, the sending MTA receives no indication of refused delivery --
a bad thing.  Oh well.  Not my problem.

> > 2.  Most silly things legitimate mail does can be accomodated by an
> > efficient antispam regime; a few cannot.  Remember the screams
> > of outrage when people started being told "You shouldn't run 
> > open relays any more?"  We're entering another round of that.
> 
> Immaterial, I know, but Last time I looked Gilmore was still fighting
> that one.  :-)

My point, of course, was to compare that transition with the current
one.  (And, yeah, sorry, John, but you lose.  ;->  )

[HTML mail:]

> No, it was just an example since Alvin mentioned it.  I don't see much
> point in html mail but the headhunters who send me job offers appear
> to like it, so I have to find a way to accept it in an inoffensive (to
> me) manner.

Using a suitable mailcap does the trick for me.  If you're having to 
do post-MDA filtering based on content (such as discarding HTML mail),
that means that your primary mail-handling is failing to do the job,
ealrier in the process.

People who put significant stock in content-based filtering are pursuing
a losing antispam strategy.  They'll probably figure that out by
themselves, eventually.  In either case, not my problem.

> > And another fine, ruddy herring!  Delicious, thanks.
> 
> Uhh, what?  My original starting point in all this was to find out if
> Alvin's suggestions had merit.  

Oh, sorry:  I actually didn't see Alvin's post, having been a bit busy
today.  Accordingly, I was responding to yours.

A "What's spam" discussion struck me as irrelevant to the point I was
discussing with you -- so thank you for explaining where it came from.
(You're welcome to have that other conversation with Alvin, of course.)

> Following on that, what would it take to implement them?  My favourite
> admin is loathe to do _anything_ that could cause his users to
> complain of lost mail.  How he cuts out the %60-%80 of crap without
> causing a riot is all I wanted to know.

A good point.  It's unfortunate that so many mail admins, especially
corporate ones, are obliged to resort to that sort of doublespeak.

Anyhow, although I don't have Alvin's list of suggestions, I do have my
own:

o  Do all possible detection and rejection at SMTP time.
o  Use MTA ACLs (preferably using Exim 4.x's extremely cool callout
   interface) to test for RFC-compliance and to check SPF records.
o  Season with punitive teergrubing, to taste.  ;->
o  Help advance the state of the art by introducing SRS rewriting
   for any required forwarding, using SMTP AUTH, etc.

> BTW, regarding "2." above.  Remember the days when there was such
> reticence on the part of Sendmail's maintainers to actually change
> Sendmail to comply with RFCs?  It was pretty well a given then that
> doing so would turn half the planet dark overnight because so many
> admins were still running Sendmail versions that had been obsoleted
> years before.
> 
> Ah, those were the days.  :-P

Yes, indeed!

http://linuxmafia.com/pub/humour/500-mile-e-mail

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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread s. keeling
Incoming from Alvin Oga:
> On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, s. keeling wrote:
> 
> personal email .. you can proably reject alll html emails
> and whitelist all your friends that are sending html emails

... Assuming you can see into the future and can predict where all
your future mail will be coming from.  That's an impossible
assumption.  I get personal replies from Usenet, from debian-*, from
headhunters, from friends of my friends, from people I've never heard
of who landed on my homepage, ...

I'm sick of whitelisting.  It doesn't work if you care about
communicating with people you've never met.

Besides, the simple way to deal with html is with mutt and a .mailcap:

  text/html; /usr/bin/w3m -dump %s; copiousoutput; nametemplate=%s.html


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess - recipients

2004-06-03 Thread Alvin Oga

hi ya blu

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Blu wrote:

> I agree, but it was suggested that any mail server should reject spam at
> SMTP time, and not bounce it at all.

yupp ... best to do at smtp time

> If my relay server (not open, but
> relay for customers) has no means to verify recipients, what to do when the
> destination server rejects that mail already accepted by my server?.

make it part of your overall services and policy, that you require a 
list of authorized users  .. if you dont know about [EMAIL PROTECTED]
than you will consider it a forged acct

- you now have a list of all valid email accounts and 
any unknown address is rejected/bounced/fried/devnulled
( the users does NOT have to have a shell acct ... 
( gazillion ways to do this

- you reject unknown users on incoming email addressed to joe
- you reject outgoing mail from "joe"
( ez to do with wireless laptops )

- and if joe is using a borrowed laptop from the spouse
or sitting at a different office pc ... humm .. more isssues
 
> Bounce.

back.

c ya
alvin


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Bernd Eckenfels
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote:
> Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
> to/from our customers?

If you relay mail  from your customers, you have to deliver them their
bounces if they spam. If you relay to your customers you better make sure
the backup mx is trying to pipeline the mail to the primary and also forward
the reject in case of spam or inapropriate destination.

But thats quite normal mail setup, nowadays.

Greetings
Bernd
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Project Freefire - http://www.freefire.org/


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 05:32:17PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> >Was there a particular part of the immediately preceding reference to
> >SPF that you didn't get, or was it the concept as a whole?
> 
> I get the concept of vaporware. Seen a lot of it over the years.

Sorry to hear about your sysadmin shortage, then.

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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> The end result is the same in a lot of cases.

I'm sorry, what part of "fixing local problems first, and understanding
the scope of one's responsibility" are you not quite getting?

> The point is that you shouldn't take a holier-than-thou attitude about
> when people should send bounces.

I merely note that sending bounces of forged spam is a bad thing, for
perfectly obvious reasons, and personally take measures to prevent being
guilty of doing so.

Moreover, I treat sites that visit that upon me in significant amounts
as spam sources, regardless of their excuses.  I'm sorry you don't like
that.  Your opinion is noted and duly ignored.

> In the case of viruses, when it's unequivocal that a message is
> garbage you should just drop it on the floor.

I'd much rather refuse it.  For:

> If you're going to take any kind of action to reject the message,
> OTOH, you've got the possibility of a bounce going to the wrong
> person.

Sorry, this is a dementedly wrong notion of responsibility.  Refusing
the mail doesn't generate a bounce message; it just refuses it.  I am
not going to take responsibility for someone else's misbehaviour (e.g.,
an upstream MTA).

If the other site is sufficiently obnoxious in its behaviour, it's
likely to end up getting whapped hard, in ways beyond mere refusal.  

> That's life until there's a system in place for validating envelope
> addresses. SPF may or may not be that way in the future. At the moment
> it is not.

1.  Irrelevant to the question of responsibility.
2.  Speak for yourself.  I do implement SPF.  Please see earlier 
citations for implementation details, if interested.

> It's not misbehaving to generate a bounce message. Glad I could clear
> that up.

Send out "bounce messages" [sic] of forged mail in sufficiently large
numbers, and you're likely to end up being treated as a spam source.
That's a fact.  Deal.



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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:24:35PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> >One can pretend that the matter's open for debate, but that would be a
> >waste of time:  It's happening.
> 
> Sure it is. How do you manage to sleep, fixing all the email systems in
> the world *and* evangelizing at the same time? Must be tough.

(Troll duly noted and ignored.)

> >People who put significant stock in content-based filtering are pursuing
> >a losing antispam strategy.  
> 
> All antispam strategies are a losing strategy, unless you're a zealot
> who believes that everyone else in the world (and human nature) will
> change. 

My, you _are_ a veritable fount of non-perspective, aren't you?

Some antispam strategies are by relative measures non-starters relative
to others.  In particular, doing all of your primary processing via
content-based filtering, particularly at the MDA/MUA level, has proven
over time to be particularly ineffective, and tempts people to do dumb
things like /dev/nulling all HTML mail.

> Every time you come up with a new fix someone else will come up
> with a new strategy to avoid it. What's your strategy to cope with
> perfectly valid smtp messages that just happen to contain spam?

DNSBLs, collaborative detection, and several measures that include
Bayesian recognition during SMTP time as a _secondary_ measure.  (Was
there a particular part of the word "primary" that you didn't get,
earlier?)

Ultimately, it would be good to collectively whitelist IPs that show
willingness to be responsible for mail they send, and bandwidth-throttle
others.  There are proposals being worked on for this.  See, for example: 
http://www.templetons.com/brad/spam/endspam.html

> >They'll probably figure that out by themselves, eventually.  In either
> >case, not my problem.
> 
> Yet you can't seem to stop making it your problem. Curious.

What part of my describing strictly local measures, and insisting that
other people's misbehaviour is their problem, were you not quite
understanding?


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Michael Stone
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 05:32:17PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
Was there a particular part of the immediately preceding reference to
SPF that you didn't get, or was it the concept as a whole?
I get the concept of vaporware. Seen a lot of it over the years.
Mike Stone
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Michael Stone
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 05:29:25PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
Earlier, I mentioned (to summarise and review) that I take care to have
my MTA reject mail it considers inherently objectionable on various
grounds, as a superior alternative to performing such processing after
acceptance.  (Among other things, it allows my system to say "no"
without being guilty of generating bogus bounces to forged addresses.)
Mr. Stone then opined that he saw no advantage because an upstream MTA
might (e.g., if it was a relay) react to my 55X Reject by issuing a
bogus bounce of its own.
The end result is the same in a lot of cases. The point is that you
shouldn't take a holier-than-thou attitude about when people should send
bounces. In the case of viruses, when it's unequivocal that a message is
garbage you should just drop it on the floor. If you're going to take
any kind of action to reject the message, OTOH, you've got the
possibility of a bounce going to the wrong person. That's life until
there's a system in place for validating envelope addresses. SPF may or
may not be that way in the future. At the moment it is not.
I've heard this sort of comment before from people who really ought to
know better, and who actually _do_ understand the concept of local
responsibility.  Maybe they're bored and are trolling; it's difficult to
say.  Or maybe they're just following the ever-popular philosophy of
post first, think later.
To spell it out, I'm responsible for making sure _my_ MTA isn't
misbehaving.  I'm not responsible for _your_ MTA misbehaving.
It's not misbehaving to generate a bounce message. Glad I could clear
that up.
Mike Stone
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Blu ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> If my relay server (not open, but relay for customers) has no means to
> verify recipients, what to do when the destination server rejects that
> mail already accepted by my server?.  Bounce.

(Implicit assumption that you have no option but to accept forged-sender
spam noted without further comment.)

Well, you will increasingly find your MTA put on a "teergrube this
chump" list, if it keeps doing that.  I'm not telling you what to do;
I'm just predicting what's going to happen.  In your shoes, out of
self-interest, I'd work at making my system behave like that as little
as possible.



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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Alvin Oga

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Blu wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:34:44PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

> > Do I win a prize, 

yup :-)

> or was that just a qualifying round, and the real
> > questions, that actually require thinking, will come later?
> 
> Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
> to/from our customers?

you're taking it too far dude ... 
violating common sense and assumptions is a bad thing ;-)

i think the "reject mail from open relay" is a good thing
and is totally different than "relay your own or customers mail"

c ya
alvin


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread s. keeling
Incoming from Rick Moen:
> Quoting s. keeling ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> 
> > Yes.  The problem with Alvin's solution is it only looks at the crap
> > that spammers send.  A lot of legitimate mail does all the silly
> > things that spammers do, and users do want to receive that mail.
> 
> 1.  Content-based filtering doesn't work very well (if that's what
> you mean, which you probably don't).

I actually meant the typical "worst practices" for which spammers are
so well known.  Spammers use these things to avoid detection.  Average
users do them without even realizing it.  For instance, Alvin
automatically deep-sixes html mail.  Ordinary users don't even know
when they're sending html mails.

> 2.  Most silly things legitimate mail does can be accomodated by an
> efficient antispam regime; a few cannot.  Remember the screams
> of outrage when people started being told "You shouldn't run 
> open relays any more?"  We're entering another round of that.

Immaterial, I know, but Last time I looked Gilmore was still fighting
that one.  :-)

> > You and I may see no legitimate point to html mail, but ordinary users
> 
> (If you think this discussion concerns HTML mail, you have badly
> misunderstood.  See also point #1, supra.)

No, it was just an example since Alvin mentioned it.  I don't see much
point in html mail but the headhunters who send me job offers appear
to like it, so I have to find a way to accept it in an inoffensive (to
me) manner.

> > For a big organization with thousands of users, what's Spam is not
> > really all that easy to quantify.
> 
> And another fine, ruddy herring!  Delicious, thanks.

Uhh, what?  My original starting point in all this was to find out if
Alvin's suggestions had merit.  Following on that, what would it take
to implement them?  My favourite admin is loathe to do _anything_ that
could cause his users to complain of lost mail.  How he cuts out the
%60-%80 of crap without causing a riot is all I wanted to know.

BTW, regarding "2." above.  Remember the days when there was such
reticence on the part of Sendmail's maintainers to actually change
Sendmail to comply with RFCs?  It was pretty well a given then that
doing so would turn half the planet dark overnight because so many
admins were still running Sendmail versions that had been obsoleted
years before.

Ah, those were the days.  :-P


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> I'm sure the guy who got joe jobbed is happy that you can point out the
> source of his misforture. Must be real comforting and all.

Was there a particular part of the immediately preceding reference to
SPF that you didn't get, or was it the concept as a whole?

(Kid, I was in the thick of the eponymous incident on NANAE when Joe
Doll got hit.  You have nothing to teach me about joe-jobs.)


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Blu
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 05:16:10PM -0700, Alvin Oga wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Blu wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:34:44PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> 
> > > Do I win a prize, 
> 
> yup :-)
> 
> > or was that just a qualifying round, and the real
> > > questions, that actually require thinking, will come later?
> > 
> > Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
> > to/from our customers?
> 
> you're taking it too far dude ... 
> violating common sense and assumptions is a bad thing ;-)
> 
> i think the "reject mail from open relay" is a good thing
> and is totally different than "relay your own or customers mail"

I agree, but it was suggested that any mail server should reject spam at
SMTP time, and not bounce it at all. If my relay server (not open, but
relay for customers) has no means to verify recipients, what to do when the
destination server rejects that mail already accepted by my server?.
Bounce.

Blu.


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Blu ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
> to/from our customers?

I'm quite non-plussed at this question, since it seems to suggest that you
weren't following the thread.

Earlier, I mentioned (to summarise and review) that I take care to have
my MTA reject mail it considers inherently objectionable on various
grounds, as a superior alternative to performing such processing after
acceptance.  (Among other things, it allows my system to say "no"
without being guilty of generating bogus bounces to forged addresses.)

Mr. Stone then opined that he saw no advantage because an upstream MTA
might (e.g., if it was a relay) react to my 55X Reject by issuing a
bogus bounce of its own.

I've heard this sort of comment before from people who really ought to
know better, and who actually _do_ understand the concept of local
responsibility.  Maybe they're bored and are trolling; it's difficult to
say.  Or maybe they're just following the ever-popular philosophy of
post first, think later.

To spell it out, I'm responsible for making sure _my_ MTA isn't
misbehaving.  I'm not responsible for _your_ MTA misbehaving.

If some upstream MTA (such as, hypothetically, yours) decides to take do
something irresponsible and socially destructive (such as sending spam
to a forged alleged sender) in reaction to my MTA saying "No, I don't
accept that mail", then that _other_ MTA's admin is accountable for
_his_ system's misbehaviour, and I hope and expect that we will all
(figuratively) LART him until he bleeds.

Now, if that MTA's admin says "Hey, I'm not responsible; I'm just a poor
innocent relay", I'd say he'd better get accustomed to being accountable
for mail his system sends out, since other admins _are_ clear on that
point, even if he isn't.  If the admin has no other way of making sure 
his system doesn't incontinently issue bogus "bounce" messages to forged
addresses when spam/malware is refused downstream, then he'd be well
advised to improve his _own_ ability to reject bogus mail, making its
subsequent relaying a non-issue.

Please also (since you're a relay) read the prior posted links about
SRS.



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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread Michael Stone
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:24:35PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
One can pretend that the matter's open for debate, but that would be a
waste of time:  It's happening.
Sure it is. How do you manage to sleep, fixing all the email systems in
the world *and* evangelizing at the same time? Must be tough.
People who put significant stock in content-based filtering are pursuing
a losing antispam strategy.  
All antispam strategies are a losing strategy, unless you're a zealot
who believes that everyone else in the world (and human nature) will
change. Every time you come up with a new fix someone else will come up
with a new strategy to avoid it. What's your strategy to cope with
perfectly valid smtp messages that just happen to contain spam?
They'll probably figure that out by themselves, eventually.  In either
case, not my problem.
Yet you can't seem to stop making it your problem. Curious.
Mike Stone
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread Alvin Oga


On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, s. keeling wrote:

> I actually meant the typical "worst practices" for which spammers are
> so well known.  Spammers use these things to avoid detection.  Average

maybe we should reject misspelled email subject lines :-)

> users do them without even realizing it.  For instance, Alvin
> automatically deep-sixes html mail.  

> Ordinary users don't even know when they're sending html mails.

corp users dont care or need to care where incoming business mails
are coming from in whatever format and languages ( and *.tld )
- lot harder to define spam in a corp environment

personal email .. you can proably reject alll html emails
and whitelist all your friends that are sending html emails

> 
> No, it was just an example since Alvin mentioned it. 

because html based email is the devil ... carrying spam and virii :-)
and most people dont care that they send text and html emails

> Uhh, what?  My original starting point in all this was to find out if
> Alvin's suggestions had merit.

has merit only if you agree with the strict or dumb antispam rules
and conversely, a bad set of rules if one doesnt agree with it

>  Following on that, what would it take to implement them?

some of the typical antispam rules are 5 minutes to solve, solved
once for everybody ...

>  My favourite admin is loathe to do _anything_ that
> could cause his users to complain of lost mail.  How he cuts out the
> %60-%80 of crap without causing a riot is all I wanted to know.

lost emails is a bad thing ... nobody likes to be told they
didnt get their emails

> BTW, regarding "2." above.  Remember the days when there was such
> reticence on the part of Sendmail's maintainers to actually change
> Sendmail to comply with RFCs?  It was pretty well a given then that
> doing so would turn half the planet dark overnight because so many
> admins were still running Sendmail versions that had been obsoleted
> years before.

things should go dark .. so that one understands what a bigger
hole we're digging, but its too late now ... 

c ya
alvin


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting David Stanaway ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> My mail system has a number of users, and I prefer to let the recipient 
> decide what is spam.

There's a minor problem with this, about which more below.

> Some list servers such as yahoogroups (May it rot in pieces) have the 
> annoying behavior of deactivating your subscription on hard bounces 
> from MTAs so whenever a list I am subscribed to with lax attachment 
> policies gets a worm, and I hard bounce it with mime-header-checks, I 
> get deactivated. So this is just one example of hard bouncing spam not 
> being a great system wide policy right now (Unless you don't like your 
> users :P).

Bouncing spam at all, in any way, is irresponsible admin behaviour.
Consider:  Essentially all spam forges as much header information as
possible, and the newer generation even forges the envelope return-path
data.  Therefore, if you bounce spam, it is almost 100% guaranteed to 
be sent out to a forged address -- a party (extant or not) that did not 
send the original spam in the first place.  In effect, you are
generating _additional_ spam with each and every such bounce.

However, if your system is able to determine _during the SMTP session_
that the mail is unwanted (as spam or for some other reason), it can
issue a 55X Reject error and refuse delivery, instead of accepting the
mail and then having to make the poor choice between /dev/nulling the
received mail and issuing an almost certainly inappropriate bounce
message.

Smarter and better remedies are possible during SMTP time, than they are
after delivery.  A number of other steps are possible, beyond what I've
mentioned.

And, of course, by the time your users have a chance to apply their
judgement on the matter, the MTA has already accepted the mail and
handed it off to an LDA or MDA -- so the opportunity is lost.

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Rick MoenBu^so^stopu min per kulero.  
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Michael Stone
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:34:44PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
Gee, I guess that relay should have rejected the spam instead of relaying
it, right?  Then, it wouldn't feel a compulsion to issue a completely
inappropriate "bounce" [sic] message to a forged sender.
I'm sure the guy who got joe jobbed is happy that you can point out the
source of his misforture. Must be real comforting and all.
Do I win a prize, or was that just a qualifying round, and the real
questions, that actually require thinking, will come later?
I'm not sure you'd qualify for the thinking round. Seems like you're
just a big ball of spam hating fury, no?
Mike Stone
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread David Stanaway


On Jun 3, 2004, at 3:07 PM, Alvin Oga wrote:


post processing is for the birds in my limited world of 10,000+
mails per day ... most of which are spam

- the original posts spam assassin didnt reject
the incoming spam to "undisclosed recepient"

- once they validate the email addy is good, you're
  promptly added to a new more expensive spam list

- receiving spam is a bad thing


My mail system has a number of users, and I prefer to let the recipient 
decide what is spam.


The question was really about the empty spams that are showing up in 
the last month or so, and what they are intended for. Weather it was a 
prelude to an MTA exploiting worm strike, or just spammers assessing 
the value of their spam lists before using them to deliver their 
spamloads.


My content filtering mostly works. It catches over 99% of spam and I 
have only had 1 false positive, and I think I will stick with it.


Some list servers such as yahoogroups (May it rot in pieces) have the 
annoying behavior of deactivating your subscription on hard bounces 
from MTAs so whenever a list I am subscribed to with lax attachment 
policies gets a worm, and I hard bounce it with mime-header-checks, I 
get deactivated. So this is just one example of hard bouncing spam not 
being a great system wide policy right now (Unless you don't like your 
users :P).





Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Blu
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 04:34:44PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> 
> > Yeah, big difference. If the spam is going through a relay, the relay
> > will send the same bounce and the same person will get the bounce
> > message. 
> 
> Oh, oh!  
> 
> Gee, I guess that relay should have rejected the spam instead of relaying
> it, right?  Then, it wouldn't feel a compulsion to issue a completely
> inappropriate "bounce" [sic] message to a forged sender.
> 
> Do I win a prize, or was that just a qualifying round, and the real
> questions, that actually require thinking, will come later?

Are you suggesting then, that we should not relay mail at all?, not even
to/from our customers?

Blu.


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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Rick Moen
Quoting Michael Stone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> Yeah, big difference. If the spam is going through a relay, the relay
> will send the same bounce and the same person will get the bounce
> message. 

Oh, oh!  

Gee, I guess that relay should have rejected the spam instead of relaying
it, right?  Then, it wouldn't feel a compulsion to issue a completely
inappropriate "bounce" [sic] message to a forged sender.

Do I win a prize, or was that just a qualifying round, and the real
questions, that actually require thinking, will come later?



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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm

2004-06-03 Thread s. keeling
Incoming from Phillip Hofmeister:
> On Thu, 03 Jun 2004 at 04:10:30PM -0400, s. keeling wrote:
> > > I don't use spamassisin, just bogofilter.  Here is my relevant
> > > procmailrc snippet...
> > 
> > Downloading it now, thanks.  Hopefully this gets me back to a
> > maintainable system without all the exception handling, whitelisting,
> 
> Let me warn you.  Bogofilter requires training a database.  You may not

Much appreciated.  That prompted me to read the man page before I let
it bite me.  :-)

> handful of a few hundred spam messages and a few hundred ham messages to
> shoot at it right away.  use cat to pipe the messages/MBOX files through
> bogofilter -n and bogofilter -s.

That would be "bogofilter -Mn < ~/Mail/spam" for mbox style, no?

> If you are interested I can try bzip2ing my wordlist.db and sending it
> to you via http.  Email me off-list if you would like this.  This

Again, much appreciated.  I'll just start banging my head on it and
see what I can come up with.


-- 
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
(*)   http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling 
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Re: Unusual spam recently - hummm - postprocess

2004-06-03 Thread Michael Stone
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 03:23:51PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
However, if your system is able to determine _during the SMTP session_
that the mail is unwanted (as spam or for some other reason), it can
issue a 55X Reject error and refuse delivery, instead of accepting the
mail and then having to make the poor choice between /dev/nulling the
received mail and issuing an almost certainly inappropriate bounce
message.
Yeah, big difference. If the spam is going through a relay, the relay
will send the same bounce and the same person will get the bounce
message. 

Mike Stone
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