Subject: Re: [Asrg] Practicalities <thread from asrg that should be on ietf-smtp>

From: Matthew Elvey <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 15:27:03 -0700

On 5/9/05 11:55 AM, [email-masked] sent forth electrons to convey:

>On Sun, 08 May 2005, Matthew Elvey <[email-masked]> wrote:
>  
>
>>On 5/8/05 1:37 PM, John Levine sent forth electrons to convey:
>>    
>>
>>>>That's completely, hopelessly impractical if a user is traveling and has no 
>>>>control over the originating path of their outgoing E-mail.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>G P:
>>Your comments doesn't make sense to me.  What's impractical?
>>    
>>
You ignored the one question I asked.

>>There's nothing in the draft that requires anything impractical of a 
>>traveling user.
>>If you think otherwise, please refer to specific text in the draft.
>>Leibzon read more into the draft than was there.
>>The draft contains no text that says that users must use SUBMIT.
>>What the draft does is require support for a practical method already in 
>>common use for traveling users to continue to use the same From: address 
>>and server no matter where they are.  
>>    
>>
>...
>
>>(Feel free to quote, unabridged, on ietf-smtp.)
>>    
>>
>Thanks, but I'm not on that list.  Since we're dealing here with approaches 
>designed to control/limit spam, and that's what we're discussing, I feel it's 
>appropriate to talk here.
>  
>
Actually, the topic is one specific approach.
You violated my explicit request regarding how to treat the content of 
private email to you.  (Not to mention a very strong argument from Crocker.)

<Plonk>.

 > (to summarize:) My solution is the only good solution and everything 
else is nearly useless and breaks stuff <but I can provide no evidence 
or explanation as to how the draft in question breaks anything I'm 
taking about.>.

Of course, authentication and certification will only be helpful if 
there are consequences.  I'm willing to bet that the reputation services 
that will be most useful will be the ones only vouch for very clean 
entities.

I don't think much of your scheme because it is one to which spammers 
would very easily adapt if it became widespread.  There's no reason the 
payload of 95-99% of the spam I get wouldn't be readily adapted to 
limited-size plain text email.

_______________________________________________
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---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 01:52:01 +0200

Matthew Elvey wrote:

> (Not to mention a very strong argument from Crocker.)
> <plonk>

While you offer this opportunity for an off topic comment
(I'm on both lists and don't care):  I'm unable to reach
any of Dave's 2 addresses, dito the postmaster@ variants,
error reports submitted to RFCI.  Nothing serious from my
POV, only an xml2rfc oddity with mail-arch.  The dubious
address is also listed in draft-hutzler-...  Bye, Frank

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 07:28:40 +0000 (GMT)

>You ignored the one question I asked.

And you ignored the multiple legitimate points I raised.  Fair is fair.  :-)

>Actually, the topic is one specific approach.

Fine, I believe that anything which requires senders to route their mail through 
some specific MTA is impractical, simply because a large number of internet 
access points that are available to travelers simply don't let the user have any 
say whatsoever about what MTA is going to handle their outgoing mail.

>private email to you.  (Not to mention a very strong argument from Crocker.)

Frankly, I'm not interested in carrying on extended private debates.  You're not 
likely to convince me, and it seems I'm not likely to convince you.  The 
discussion is only interesting if it enlightens someone else here, and serves 
some purpose beyond just consuming my limited E-mail time.

><Plonk>.

Do whatever you like.  Frankly, this issue goes beyond the egos of any one 
participant here.  If you don't want to read my posts, then don't.  I honestly 
don't care, since it seems you're not getting much from them in either case.

>or explanation as to how the draft in question breaks anything I'm 

You're welcome to express any opinion you like about my ideas, but I'd 
appreciate you doing it in some other way than by putting words (or trying to) 
in MY mouth.

I would never pretend that my solution is the only POSSIBLE good solution, but I 
will observe that over the last several years there have certainly been no 
shortage of ideas tossed out here, and most of them have some pretty big gotchas 
which most people clearly aren't willing to accept... that's why we're still 
having this discussion.  If there were an obvious and satisfying technical 
solution that we all agreed on, the life of this group would have been a very 
short one.

>there are consequences.  

It's not clear that it's very helpful even if THERE ARE "consequences".

The great majority of machines pumping out spam probably belong to clueless 
users (or even NOT-clueless ones, for that matter) whose machines have been 
commandeered as a result of worms or viruses... the "spambot zombie" problem.  

So your Aunt Matilda's ISP notifies her that her machine has sent out spam for 
the last three days.  What "consequences" do you think would create justice?  
Should they cancel Aunt Matilda's account and excommunicate her to some offline 
backwater for the rest of the poor dear's remaining life?  That's not terribly 
helpful.  Do they help her exorcise the spambot zombie from her machine?  Maybe 
so, but that's not going to absolutely prevent her machine from being 
commandeered again, some day in the future.

Even if someone updates their antivirus software EVERY SIX HOURS there's still a 
significant window of vulnerability between the time that a new virus or worm 
appears and the time that their antivirus program detects it.  And *all* viruses 
and worms are at their most prolific and most dangerous before ANY anti-virus 
program detects them.  Things like Blaster had infected literally MILLIONS of 
machines around the world within the first few hours of its release into the 
wild.

Even if you boot Aunt Matilda, eventually you'll boot most everybody off the 
net... there, are you satisfied now?  I don't think that's a terribly good 
solution, either.

> I'm willing to bet that the reputation services 

1)  "very clean entities" can still be infected.

2)  "reputation services" can vouch for people who are sending spam.

3)  "reputation services" can probably THEMSELVES be compromised.

4)  Even if a 100% dependable "reputation service" exists someday, what good 
does that do?  Do you expect that mail won't be accepted from anybody that said 
service won't vouch for?  Again, you end up dividing the Net, and the part that 
still has the privilege of E-mailing will find themselves in very small camp 
indeed.  E-mail isn't very useful if most people are excluded from it.

>would very easily adapt if it became widespread.  

Ultimately, the way they could (and probably would) adapt would be to stop using 
E-mail as the vector for sending spam and (in particular) infecting other 
machines to create spambot zombies.  They'll probably shift to using malicious 
Web sites instead (and that's a separate problem to be solved, but at least we 
would have solved a great part of the problem via E-mail that is OUR charter).

> There's no reason the 

Fine.  I *hope* in fact that they will do that.  Once that is done:

1)  The sheer bytecount volume of that E-mail is likely to be 3-5x smaller than 
at present (at least on a per-message basis)... thus reducing wasted bandwidth, 
wasted disk resources, and many other of the costs of carrying and queueing 
unwanted E-mails.

2)  The GREAT majority of the tricks that spammers and abusers use to evade 
content filters are denied to them.  Most spammer evasions of filters are based 
on HTML, encryption scripting, ActiveX, text-as-image, obscured or 
misrepresented links, Web site redirection, and the like.  My proposal is not 
intended to be a complete solution in and of itself, it's intended to be used in 
conjunction with a good content filter... and applies conditions to the incoming 
mail stream that allow that content filter to be *far* more effective and 
efficient.

3)  Limited-size plain text E-mails are EXCEEDINGLY unlikely to be able to be 
able to carry worms or viruses.  Your claim that "spammers would very easily 
adapt" is true for most of the approaches that we've discussed here (SPF for 
example, and at least most of the other authentication schemes) but nobody has 
yet offered (at least not that *I* have seen anywhere) convincing evidence that 
quarantining or otherwise blocking attachments [and especially those likely to 
contain executable content (EXE/PIF/COM/BAS/etc)] in E-mails (from people not 
trusted by a given recipient to send such executable attachments) doesn't at 
least put a SERIOUS crimp in the ability of worms and viruses to propagate to 
that recipient through E-mail.

If you know of any way for that to happen (other than through Web sites, which 
as I'll freely admit is probably going to be the next battleground of this war) 
then please feel free to share it with us.

4)  Once you make worms/viruses/bugs dramatically less feasible to send in 
E-mail (and in a way that doesn't depend on a never-ending stream of predictably 
after-the-fact updates to antivirus software), you will have HUGELY reduced the 
ability of spammers and other abusers to not only just send spam, but also to 
conduct any number of other exploits, including the launching of DDOS attacks 
from their commandeered spambot armies.

I certainly don't claim that nobody else can possibly come up with a good 
competing solution to the problem, but I will say on the record that I haven't 
seen anything else here yet which has the interesting and useful set of features 
and logistical/operational characteristics that my proposal does, that breaks 
fewer existing worldwide systems, or that does anywhere near as much to 
effectively address not just the spam problem but also the virus/worm/DDOS 
problems too.

Are there downsides to my proposal?  Sure there are. 

One of them is that my proposal gives control to and is centered on the final 
recipient.  While in many ways that is an ADVANTAGE (and probably, IMHO, by 
enough that the downside is rendered 'acceptable'), it unfortunately does mean 
that most of the backbone carrying cost of the spam is going to continue (at 
least until spam stops carrying bulkier HTML-burdened content or attachments, 
and until when viruses/worms abandon E-mail as a vector and shift to more 
promising propagation approaches instead).

ULTIMATELY what dooms spam, is less impenetrable technological barriers than it 
is the realization by the spammers that there have become easier scams and other 
ways to earn their living.  I don't think we'll EVER eliminate 100% of unwanted 
E-mails (and indeed, the cost (both social and financial) of doing so are 
probably far more undesirable than the residual unwanted E-mail volume is.)

Gordon Peterson                  http://personal.terabites.com/
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