Subject: Re: [Asrg] SICS

From: "Hannigan, Martin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 20:06:12 -0500

Did you mean small percentage of vulns "on the list" or vulnerable machines?

They can't easily control the inection rate, but they can control the
utilization rate. One thing they want is non rbl listed zombies. This is a
good tactic re infect many, list them, then silence until needed. 

-M

---
Martin Hannigan
[email-masked]
Verisign, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked] <[email-masked]>
Sent: Sun Jan 02 12:04:52 2005
Subject: Re: [Asrg] SICS

[email-masked] wrote:

>> In order for it to eliminate zombies, it has to be implemented by
>>_everybody else_.  That's not going to happen.
>
> Well, yes and no.
>
> I agree that you probably won't eliminate 100% of the vulnerability, but
at some 
> point the remainder doesn't much matter.  The issue is whether the
vulnerability 
> is widespread enough to ATTEMPT to exploit it.

And that doesn't take much.

> It also depends on how quickly such a fine-grained permissions list
> approach is accepted and installed.  Obviously, if Microsoft were to
> include something like this in Outlook and Outlook Express by
> default, it would be much more effective and much sooner than if
> Infopoint or some other small software company were to try to market
> it as an addon package.

You mean 5 years instead of 20?

>> You're assuming that you can tell whether or not the _recipient's_ MUA
>> will attempt to interpret a message as HTML.
>
> It doesn't much matter.  Most spammers don't know, either, what specific
E-mail 
> client program a destination address is using.  Nor do they care, in
> fact.  

Precisely.  The spammers will attack a vulnerability that affects only
a small percentage.  You have to defend against all such
vulnerabilities.

That issue is already known in virus protection.  Some email clients
were treating some messages as HTML that the anti-virus software
thought was (safe) plaintext.  The spammer didn't care _which_ victim
he got, just _how many_.

>> For some spammers, maybe.  Many others sell their services, and the
>> worldwide shortage of suckers is not expected soon.
>
> It won't take long for the word to get around that spamming doesn't work 
> anymore, and that some types work dramatically less well than others.

And some spammers will just think it's good that the market is less
crowded, and spam more.

>> Prove it.  Come up with a reasonable implementation that my mother can
>> handle.
>
> I'll be GLAD to do that, and I'll even bring it to release-ready, if
> you'll fund the development.  :-)

In other words, you're claiming something that doesn't exist and
offering no evidence.

> The point is that this is IMPLEMENTATION-DEPENDENT, and does not
> need to be part of a "best practices" advisory.  Some companies are
> hugely better at "human-engineering" software products than others
> are; given that, we don't have to concern ourselves HERE with the
> fact that some of them might not do a terrific job of it.

However, it's close to necessary to demonstrate that it's _possible_
to do an acceptably-good job.

> Again, though, I'll point out that once you default to "no
> attachments, no HTML" in E-mails from unlisted senders, you don't
> leave the spammers much room to evade much of anything, at least as
> far as their E-mail content goes.

As I've already pointed out, "no attachments, no HTML" isn't a
clear-cut decision, and spammers will take advantage of every
implementation difference of opinion.

>>> Sounds good, until the "spammer" can find a case (even just ONE)
>>> where the intended recipient actually WANTED the E-mail in question,
>>> and said user didn't feel they had in fact granted their ISP the
>>> 'right' to MIS-BLOCK mail that the user actually wanted.
>>
>> Then the ISP show the contract the user agreed to, and the law
>> granting it immunity.
>
> There are a LOT of contracts which judges end up NOT holding as
> enforceable.

That's because there are laws against such contracts.  In this case,
there is a federal law (in the US) specifically allowing the ISP to
make such decisions, and immunizing it for doing so.

>> Mail Service Providers are growing.  They don't have to provide
>> Internet access; some people prefer buying unbundled services.
>
> Many ISPs try (hard) to prevent their customers using other mail
> service providers.  Agreed that they are not likely to be totally
> successful at that.

I haven't heard of _any_ doing that.  Do you know of any who have
blocked the ports for SUBMIT, POP, etc.?

Seth

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---

From: Seth Breidbart <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 00:03:24 -0500 (EST)

> Did you mean small percentage of vulns "on the list" or vulnerable

If even a small percentage of machines are vulnerable, multiply by a
lot of machines and they get a lot of infected machines.

> They can't easily control the inection rate, but they can control
> the utilization rate. One thing they want is non rbl listed
> zombies. This is a good tactic re infect many, list them, then
> silence until needed.

Or set the rent for a non-listed machine higher, and try each victim
 from a listed machine, if that doesn't get through, then use a
non-listed machine.

Seth