IBM Unveils Anti-Spam Services to Stop Spammers 443
bblazer writes "CNN Money is running a story about a new IBM service that spams the spammers. The idea behind the technology is that when a spam email is received, it is immediately sent back to the originating computer - not an email account. From the article, ""We're doing it to shut this guy down," Stuart McIrvine, IBM's director of corporate security strategy, told the paper. "Every time he tries to send, he gets slammed again."""
Not a good idea. (Score:2, Informative)
Rather than adding yet more traffic to the net I think it'd be far better if more places ran OpenBSD's spamd [openbsd.org] package. It tarpit's mail connections from spammer machines thus consuming the remote machine's resources rather than generating more traffic in a misguided game of "fight fire with fire".
FairUCE (Score:5, Informative)
Useless article AND dupe (Score:5, Informative)
However, the CNN story referenced seems to be utterly clueless as to how this technology, known as FairUCE, actually works. It really is nothing like they have described it. For real information go to IBM's page: http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/fairuce
This system does not try to DDOS the spammers, or anything stupid like that. It attempts to link the IP address of the sender to the senders domain name using DNS and WHOIS lookups. If that fails, it sends a challenge/response email to the sender.
Re:works great for honest spammers (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/fairuce
Re:Any idea what this actually means? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:works great for honest spammers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Any idea what this actually means? (Score:3, Informative)
If you have somebody opening a TCP connection to your mail server, you already *know* what IP address is on the other end. And, as IBM has realized, that's *all* you know, so that's the place to start applying pressure.
Re:Any idea what this actually means? (Score:3, Informative)
try reading the SMTP RFC's sometime,
the *only* part one can trust is the IP of the machine sending the message
Yeah, that will be impossible to avoid... (Score:3, Informative)
ipchains -A input -s $MYNETWORKS -j ACCEPT
ipchains -A input -p tcp -dport 25 -j DENY
I mean, I suppose in theory IBM could DOS my ipchains, but this is rate-limited by what I'm capable of sending out, which is significantly less than ipchains could handle.
Re:With all the spam zombies, how will this help? (Score:5, Informative)
As someone else pointed out, this could be used to DDOS someone by using a zombie net sending spam purporting to come from them. They'd then get innundated with challenge/reponse emails. Not nice.
Re:e-mails coming from a computer on the spam list (Score:3, Informative)
It says the mails will be returned immediately. The effect of innocent users should be minimal and short term, Once there's no more mail going out, the problem will clear up.
Re:works great for honest spammers (Score:4, Informative)
That will get the user of FairUCE blacklisted (Score:3, Informative)
That will get the user of FairUCE blacklisted. It's called backscatter. The email address provided in the SMTP transaction, or the message headers, should ABSOLUTELY NOT be considered valid unless, and until, the IP is verified as designated by the domain of the RHS of that email address. And then even that won't work very well if spammers start forging addresses within the same domain as the zombied machine. Don't forget that spammers do have a list of lots of email addresses within all the major domains. They only need to pick one at random that has @comcast.net as the RHS for the zombies running on comcast.net.
More copmlete WSJ Article (Score:4, Informative)
--
IBM Embraces Bold Method To Trap Spam
By CHARLES FORELLE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 22, 2005; Page B1
Warriors in the battle against junk e-mail are adopting a contentious tactic: Spam the spammers.
The most-common spam defense used to date -- software filters that attempt to identify and block out the unwanted messages -- hasn't stopped the flood of Viagra pitches, cut-rate mortgage offers, and solicitations for foolproof investment schemes swamping many inboxes. Some recent studies say 50% to 75% of e-mails carried over the Internet are spam.
An alternate approach -- counterattacking, in effect -- has been available for some time to users of open-source software, for which code is posted free of charge on the Internet. But adoption in corporate offices has been slow, partly because of fears of exposing companies to certain liabilities -- especially if a target is actually innocent of spamming.
But now the practice is going mainstream. International Business Machines Corp. is expected to unveil today its first major foray into the anti-spam market with a service, based on a new IBM technology called FairUCE, that uses a giant database to identify computers that are sending spam. One key feature: E-mails coming from a computer on the spam list are sent directly back to the machine, not just the e-mail account, that sent them. The more spam that comes out, the more vigorous the response.
"We're doing it to shut this guy down," says Stuart McIrvine, IBM's director of corporate security strategy. "Every time he tries to send, he gets slammed again."
The IBM move follows security giant Symantec Corp., which released a new product in January that uses a similar technology called "traffic shaping" to slow connections from suspected spam computers.
Trapping spammers is sometimes called "teergrubing," from the German word for "tar pit" -- as in, spammers get stuck. It is the equivalent of answering a telemarketer's phone call, "saying 'Hi, how are you,' and setting the phone down and seeing how long he'll talk before realizing there's no one on the other end," says Tom Liston, a computer-security expert.
Teergrubes exploit some convenient features of the Internet, which was designed to be a polite method of communication. Computers -- including e-mail servers -- that chat back and forth in the Internet's electronic protocol will courteously wait to see that their data has been received before sending more. Typically, such acknowledgments come in a matter of milliseconds. A computer set up to teergrube will languorously stretch its responses out to minutes -- effectively tying up the spamming machine and reducing its ability to pump out messages.
How to handle spam -- or, indeed, any other form of unwanted electronic traffic -- is a tricky issue in security circles. Gaining unauthorized entry to a remote system, even in order to stop it from harming yours, is generally illegal under anti-hacking laws. The aggressive new products from IBM and others don't violate those rules, but they can increase the amount of network traffic. Unnecessary traffic increases are generally frowned upon.
But proponents of aggressive antispam tactics say something needs to be done to choke off the supply; simply turning the other cheek and trying to discard spam as quickly as possible isn't enough. IBM says in a new report that in February 76% of all e-mails were spam, down from a summer 2004 peak of nearly 95%, but still well above levels at the same time last year.
"Yes, we are adding more traffic to the network, but it is in an effort to cut down the longer-term traffic," says IBM's Mr. McIrvine. Brian Czarny, vice president of marketing for MessageLabs Ltd., which uses the Symantec product, says traffic shaping doesn't constitute a potentially illegal "denial of service" attack because it is r
Confirmed - WSJ (Score:2, Informative)
IBM Embraces Bold Method To Trap Spam
By CHARLES FORELLE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 22, 2005; Page B1
Warriors in the battle against junk e-mail are adopting a contentious tactic: Spam the spammers.
The most-common spam defense used to date -- software filters that attempt to identify and block out the unwanted messages -- hasn't stopped the flood of Viagra pitches, cut-rate mortgage offers, and solicitations for foolproof investment schemes swamping many inboxes. Some recent studies say 50% to 75% of e-mails carried over the Internet are spam.
An alternate approach -- counterattacking, in effect -- has been available for some time to users of open-source software, for which code is posted free of charge on the Internet. But adoption in corporate offices has been slow, partly because of fears of exposing companies to certain liabilities -- especially if a target is actually innocent of spamming.
But now the practice is going mainstream. International Business Machines Corp. is expected to unveil today its first major foray into the anti-spam market with a service, based on a new IBM technology called FairUCE, that uses a giant database to identify computers that are sending spam. One key feature: E-mails coming from a computer on the spam list are sent directly back to the machine, not just the e-mail account, that sent them. The more spam that comes out, the more vigorous the response.
"We're doing it to shut this guy down," says Stuart McIrvine, IBM's director of corporate security strategy. "Every time he tries to send, he gets slammed again."
The IBM move follows security giant Symantec Corp., which released a new product in January that uses a similar technology called "traffic shaping" to slow connections from suspected spam computers.
Trapping spammers is sometimes called "teergrubing," from the German word for "tar pit" -- as in, spammers get stuck. It is the equivalent of answering a telemarketer's phone call, "saying 'Hi, how are you,' and setting the phone down and seeing how long he'll talk before realizing there's no one on the other end," says Tom Liston, a computer-security expert.
[Spamalot]
Teergrubes exploit some convenient features of the Internet, which was designed to be a polite method of communication. Computers -- including e-mail servers -- that chat back and forth in the Internet's electronic protocol will courteously wait to see that their data has been received before sending more. Typically, such acknowledgments come in a matter of milliseconds. A computer set up to teergrube will languorously stretch its responses out to minutes -- effectively tying up the spamming machine and reducing its ability to pump out messages.
How to handle spam -- or, indeed, any other form of unwanted electronic traffic -- is a tricky issue in security circles. Gaining unauthorized entry to a remote system, even in order to stop it from harming yours, is generally illegal under anti-hacking laws. The aggressive new products from IBM and others don't violate those rules, but they can increase the amount of network traffic. Unnecessary traffic increases are generally frowned upon.
But proponents of aggressive antispam tactics say something needs to be done to choke off the supply; simply turning the other cheek and trying to discard spam as quickly as possible isn't enough. IBM says in a new report that in February 76% of all e-mails were spam, down from a summer 2004 peak of nearly 95%, but still well above levels at the same time last year.
"Yes, we are adding more traffic to the network, but it is in an effort to cut down the longer-term traffic," says IBM's Mr. McIrvine. Brian Czarny, vice president of marketing for MessageLabs Ltd., which uses the Symantec product, says traffic shaping doesn't constitute a potentially illegal "denial of service" attack because it is responding to connections made by anot
Oh, wait. (Score:5, Informative)
Over a year ago... (Score:1, Informative)
I still think it can work, and I've (finally!) begun using KMail which has a "bounce" function.
Since using "bounce" on all spam, I've been getting far less spam, so I have to believe it works.
If spammers are able to fake the IP in the sending header, then the SMTP relays and routers need a patch to bounce any faked IP on the spot.
Lies in the CNN story title. (Score:5, Informative)
I think not. This is from CNN after all. They publicly admit they lie often. This is true here.
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/fairuce/faq
Take note to what this system actually does. Not what the (lying) press tells you.
1. Isn't this just another challenge/response system?
No. Challenge/response (C/R) systems challenge everybody; FairUCE sends a challenge only when the mail appears to be spoofed.
2. Other anti-spam technologies work well. Why should I switch?
FairUCE eliminates any need for a "probable spam" folder, as well as the necessity of keeping up with the latest version of antispam software.
3. Will it run on Windows®, or with QMail, or with Sendmail, etc.?
No, the current release does not.
4. Is it fast?
No real performance testing has been done, but speed is expected. The code basically consists of a few if/then statements and some DNS look-ups (which are cached in memory as well as on the DNS server). The mail server will probably bog down before FairUCE does.
5. Don't all those challenges take up unnecessary bandwidth?
A little bit, but it takes the server much less time to send out a small challenge than it does for the user to look at it in the spam folder, no matter how fast he presses the delete key. Legitimate senders know immediately that a user hasn't received their email, and they can click a button to have it delivered. Meanwhile, the emails sit in the queue for only an hour if they can't be delivered.
Yet another challenge response system (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, it's as utterly useless and counterproductive as any other challenge-response system. See http://www.xciv.org/~meta/2005/02/15/ [xciv.org] for more discussion (from me) of why CR won't work.
Re:How about MAC address filtering? (Score:1, Informative)
It will also challenge all legit mail from my site (Score:4, Informative)
Great:
My site administers its own mail. But direct SMTP outbound mail uses a DSL line whose reverse translation points to our DSL provider, while outbound mail through the local mail servers goes through a mailserver site at a different ISP whose reverse translation will also point to them rather than us.
So all our outgoing mail will receive the challenge. Mail is handled by polling, so every outgoing letter to a site using their tool will now require two extra email transactions, two extra wait-for-poll delays, plus an extra wait-for-sender-to-read-email delay. (No more "fire and forget - now email accounts have to be checked several times a day.)
"Click a button"? On a mail reader without HTML or with it disabled? More like "copy and edit, and hope you don't screw it up".
Yuck!
Re:To save bandwidth, how about being pro-active? (Score:3, Informative)
Its a SERVICE, Please read (Score:3, Informative)
Next he's talking about a SERVICE so that if IGS hosts a customer, it's 99% likely that the customer will have a domain of customername.com not ibm.com. The spam fighter will originate from customername.com. So if some other source detects that the spam fighter is spam only that domain will get hammered.
Re:Yet another challenge response system (Score:3, Informative)
Read why this is different. [ibm.com]
Re:Any idea what this actually means? (Score:2, Informative)
This is assuming that the IP isn't spoofed, and since SMTP could conceivably be used blindly (without receiving packets back), this isn't out of the question. However, even if they do get the IP of the spammer, my point was that if they're not running a SMTP server on their machine, there won't be anything to deliver to; connections to port 25 will simply be refused.
Sigh. (Score:2, Informative)
1. All spam is spoofed, so it will fail the IP/domain match and won't get past the challenge.
2. The vast majority of legitimate mail will pass the IP/domain match, so will be delivered without needing a challenge.
3. The only legitimate mail that needs to be challenged is sent by "power" users, who will know how to deal with a challenge.
This could initially cause false positive problems for some legitimate direct marketers who use some bulk email service providers. However, the problem is quite easily fixed.
Note that this doesn't fight spam, so much as fight spoofed senders. Much like SPF, in fact.
Note also that there's been a deal of lousy reporting (say hello to WSJ and CNN), saying that FairUCE somehow spams the spammers back. What a load of old cobblers, as we say over here.
From the quotes attributed to an IBM exec in the WSJ, I'm worried that this mis-reporting might actually be IBM's fault.