Subject: [Asrg] System hijacking

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 15:10:32 -0500

> I maintain that the primary problem with spam right now is caused by
the hijacking of systems (demonstrably) by the hundreds (probably much
more) to spew spam.

> I further maintain that without these hijacked systems spammers would
be ineffective, a relatively minor nuisance.

> There are good, structural reasons why this is the case:

> a) Spamming does not provide the sort of margin needed to purchase and
maintain the equipment they seem to rely on. Therefore, they must
steal it.

> b) Even if they could acquire such equipment, and concomitant
bandwidth, it would of necessity be located in a relatively static
location (e.g., ip addresses), and, so, relatively easy to just block.

Regardless, the point remains that a good, consent-based system in which the 
recipient can allow [only!] some trusted correspondents to send them attachments 
(and blocking unexpected/untrusted attachments that arrive from anywhere else) 
would appear to be a major step in the direction of blocking these kinds of 
programs that open backends on systems that can be subsequently exploited by 
spammers.

Happily, it also blocks the great majority of viruses, worms, and trojans too 
(especially if one makes for slightly finer degree of control such that one can 
make a distinction between "non-threatening" attachments like JPG/GIF/TXT/BMP 
files versus "risky" attachments such as .COM, .EXE, .PIF, .SCR and such 
filetypes.)  The great majority of senders would not need attachment permission 
at all, and even fewer (NONE for many recipients) would have EXECUTABLE 
attachment permission.  And those who were unknown would by default be simply 
blocked in sending anything containing attachments at all.

Gordon Peterson                  http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002  Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support the Anti-SPAM Amendment!  Join at http://www.cauce.org/
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they "represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.

_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg

---

From: Kee Hinckley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 17:44:02 -0400

At 3:10 PM -0500 6/26/03, [email-masked] wrote:
>The great majority of senders would not need attachment permission

6% of the email to wormalert contains attachments.

Virtually all of those messages were sent to everyone in the 
recipients address book.  (E.g. baby pictures, jokes...)

A number of email companies have based their entire business model on 
the fact that their user's email messages *always* include 
attachments.

Based on those, I would guess that no major software company will 
support a proposal which blocks attachments by default.  Furthermore, 
I would expect them to fight any such proposal quite vigorously.  And 
even if they fail, and such a system is put in place, people will 
very rapidly white list everyone of their close friends.  Thus 
negating any benefit in fighting viruses.  (The issue with executable 
attachments isn't so much that they are accepted, but that the email 
client is fooled into thinking that they aren't executable.  If that 
bug isn't fixed, then obviously the ability to do selective blocking 
won't be there either.  Blocking at the server sounds tempting, but 
unfortunately it means trying to guess what nutty attachment syntax 
Outlook might actually recognize, as opposed to what the standards 
said they should accept.)
-- 
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/          Anti-Spam Service for your POP Account
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/   Writings on Technology and Society

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.