[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [Asrg] [IP] 4 Rivals Almost United on Ways to Fight Spam



On 2004-06-28 23:54:14 +0200, Markus Stumpf wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 28, 2004 at 09:11:58PM +0200, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> > * A domain-based scheme protects the domain. By publishing an SPF record
> >   for hjp.at I protect my domain from being abused by spammers and
> >   worms - that will safe me from lots of bounces. (IF spf is actually
> >   used to reject messages at the SMTP level)
> 
> Out of 6,900,000 DE domains, how many owners of that domains will
> be able to produce correct SPF records? How many of them will be
> able to put them into their domain?

Did you notice that IF in capital letters? Yes, that's a big if. If SPF
is never deployed to such a degree that it is actually used to reject
mail, it is useless to those who publish SPF records.

I am an egoist, however, and I don't care about the 6.9 million DE
domains (or the few hundred K AT domains), I care about my domain. If
publishing an SPF record saved me from a significant portion of bounces,
I would be happy (I'm just rather sceptical whether that will be the
case).

Yes, SPF won't make a dent in spam. It is too easy to circumvent, and it
shouldn't be touted as an "anti-spam measure". It's an anti-joe-job
measure, nothing more.


> > Mostly I think, MTA-Mark will be beneficial to business customers of
> > cable- and dsl providers. They are often in the same address block as
> > private customers, so they are increasingly blocked by DULs. If MTA mark
> > was widely deployed, DULs would become obsolete and MTA mark can be much
> > more fine-grained.
> 
> MTAMARK will be most useful to protect non-dialup IP space. Dialup IP
> space probably should have port 25 outgoing blocked.

Whatever "dialup IP space" may be. Real dial-up IP space (phone line or
ISDN) is IMHO a small and decreasing problem. Dial-up users have little
bandwidth and they aren't long enough online to cause real trouble. 

The problem are DSL and cable accounts. They have enough bandwidth, they
are online for many hours, often around the clock, some of them do have
static IP addresses, and they are often operated by people who don't
recognize a security problem if it jumps into their face and bites their
nose off. 

However, not all of them are clueless. Some of them do know how to run a
mail server, they have a static IP address, and they prefer (for privacy
or even reliability(!) reasons) to run their own mail server. The
trouble is, you cannot currently distinguish them from their neighbours. 

This is where MTAMARK comes in. If, for example, chello (I use them as
an example, because at least one of their address ranges is included in
the SORBS DUL) marks their whole IP range as "doesn't send mail" and
their customers can easily call the helpdesk and say "I want to run a
mail server - please add an MTAMARK record for my IP address", that
would be acceptable to both the customer and the provider. Blocking port
25 on a per-IP basis is probably not feasible, and generally blocking
port 25 for an address block which contains server accounts will get
them in legal trouble.

	hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | I think we need two definitions:
|_|_) | Sysadmin WSR       | 1) The problem the *users* want us to solve
| |   | hjp at hjp.at         | 2) The problem our solution addresses.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |    -- Phillip Hallam-Baker on spam

Attachment: pgpl8vu8VE9Kf.pgp
Description: PGP signature

_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg at ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg