Subject: [Asrg] Regarding exploitation of bounces

From: Jim Youll <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 08:30:20 -0400

To those of you who gave me so much grief about how the "bounce-mail" 
exploit isn't a problem... there is another facet to it, that a spam 
solution still must address.

This morning my inbox contains dozens of 100Kbyte 
returned-as-undeliverable messages sent "from" an valid address that 
nobody knows connects to me directly, but that's visible on one web 
page... so it's not a directed attack but the random selection of an 
address to use in a  from: field. So yes, I have megabytes in my 
inbox this morning.

In this case, it looks more like one of those Microsoft-favoring 
email worms that's just gone active on lots of computers, not a spam, 
today anyway.

The point was and is this, and i wish people would support the position:

- reverse attacks have many of the same characteristics as spam
- they are a delivery vector and an attack vector
- changes under discussion to deal with spam should consider this issue as well
- if all spam solutions work perfectly and this loophole were the 
only remaining delivery method, then spammers would begin to use it.

You want to know how they think, read all about Alyx at 
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/22/technology/22SPAM.html . They think 
it's a game.

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 06:24:59 -0700

Jim,

JY> The point was and is this, and i wish people would support the position:

JY> - reverse attacks have many of the same characteristics as spam
JY> - they are a delivery vector and an attack vector
JY> - changes under discussion to deal with spam should consider this issue as well
JY> - if all spam solutions work perfectly and this loophole were the 
JY> only remaining delivery method, then spammers would begin to use it.

I agree with every point you make.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>