Major ISPs Publish Anti-Spam Best Practices 252
wayne writes "The ASTA, an alliance of major ISPs, has just published a set of best practices to help fight spam. The list of ISPs include the likes of AOL, Yahoo, MSN/Hotmail, Earthlink and Comcast. The recommendations include such things as limiting port 25 use, rate limiting email, closing redirectors and open relays, and detecting zombies. For details, see the ASTA Statement of Intent (pdf) or any of the ISP's antispam websites."
Don't forget SPF (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Don't forget SPF (Score:2)
Re:Don't forget SPF (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't forget SPF (Score:2)
Re:Don't forget SPF (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't call Verizon "lazy and stupid" when it comes to spammers on their network. I would call them "criminally negligent".
They had a spammer's website on their network for over a month. The spammer was selling a product that was blatantly illegal (digital cable descrambler). The only possible way that their product could have been legal was if it did not function as advertised, and then they would have been committing advertising fraud, so either way they were breaking the law and Verizon was allowing it to happen on their network. After a MONTH of daily complaints about the site, it only disappeared AFTER I setup a webpage documenting Verizon's open support of criminal activity and started advertising it in my
No legal threats were ever issued to me. I guess that Verizon knew that I had truth on my side.
Re:Don't forget SPF (Score:2)
Besides, the article does reference SPF, though indirectly. That and M$'s Caller-ID are the only things that I know of that realistically authenticate by IP address, and they've just recently merged.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't want to sound pessimistic (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't want to sound pessimistic (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a loose agreement by ISP's about what they need to do on thier part to confront spam. These things would improve the situation, but ISP's are reluctant to implement them out of fear that the user will become angry with the tightened security problem and go to another ISP. And I am not talking about spammers, I
Re:I don't want to sound pessimistic (Score:2)
The proposal provides recommended actions and policies for Internet
service providers (ISPs) and e-mail service providers (ESPs) as well as large
senders of e-mail including governments, private corporations and online
marketing organizations.
This isn't even intended for people like your parents.
Re:I don't want to sound pessimistic (Score:2)
but, people who need to read the articles to see what they say and who their intended targets are before they post, never actually read the freaking articles.
Do you?
Best practices,... published? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:3, Insightful)
but with a suspicious attachment or a spurious "click here if you don't want to receive such notices anymore".
I shudder to think how many people will fall for those evil tricks.
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:3, Funny)
But be sure to verify your Paypal information, that one's legit.
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you ever seen any GOOD spammer behavior?
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:5, Funny)
As a matter of fact, yes.
Some of them retire.
Or die.
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:2)
when the user calls up customer service, they can then follow the instructions on how to clear the malware.
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:4, Insightful)
Spammers always try to be one step ahead of the game. Just by keeping the best practices a *secret* wound't help to combat spam. Its the business model that needs to be attacked. Money is made somewhere and that is where we have to attack. Having said that, I think its important we keep these fighting techniques open. A lot of people would benefit from it. Also, just like security, obscurity would be of no help.
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why I run Unsolicited Commando [astrobastards.net]. It fills the inboxes of companies that pay for spam with spurious form fill-outs. I guess it's kind of like giving them a taste of their own medicine.
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:2)
That's why I run Unsolicited Commando [astrobastards.net]. It fills the inboxes of companies that pay for spam with spurious form fill-outs. I guess it's kind of like giving them a taste of their own medicine.
Unfortunately, I don't agree with this way. I don't want to start a flame war or anything but just my thoughts. Yes! I said attack the very foundation that supports spammers, which should be achieved not by doing the same thing that spammers are doing to us. Money and paper are traceable so can be
Re:Best practices,... published? (Score:2)
A retrovirus is just a virus that goes RNA->DNA. Since it usually goes DNA->RNA, they call it retro. It has nothing to do with adaptability.
Balance (Score:2, Insightful)
What about my personal mail server? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there a guideline that can help me figure out what steps I need to take to harden my mail server?
I will be using either Postfix or Microsoft Exchange.
don't put exchange as the first stop (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about my personal mail server? (Score:2, Informative)
And then be prepared to continue filtering out spam (although with my setup, of the 100+ daily messages that would get into my inbox without filtering, I now get about 1
Re:What about my personal mail server? (Score:4, Informative)
Basically don't relay mail for any user who you don't know (either by IP address or by SMTP authentication). Relaying is accepting mail for another domain and passing it on. If the server is the MX server for your domain, you must accept mail addressed to that domain regardless of whether or not you know the sending party.
>I will be using either Postfix or Microsoft Exchange.
I use sendmail, and I know that the "default" prevents unauthorized relaying. The latest version of Postfix or Exchange will almost certainly do the same. After you make any configuration changes, just verify that an outside machine can't send mail to another domain.
Whichever SMTP software you run, I'd recommend joining some comp.mail.* newsgroups.
Re:What about my personal mail server? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What about my personal mail server? (Score:2)
I'm planning on doing the same thing. When I was hunting for information I found this link [newsforge.com], it has plenty of resource information. Maybe it will help you too.
Re:What about my personal mail server? (Score:2)
One thing I can't recommend highly enough: address extensions.
You can turn them on in postfix easily. Then, it'll map anything that follows after the extension to your user mailbox. For instance, let's say you have stone@man.com
With address extensions, you could have (without changing a config file) stone+getlost@man.com, stone+slashdot@man.com, etc. Anything after the "extension" is dropped for delivery purposes, so all that mail would go into the "stone" user
Re:What about my personal mail server? (Score:2)
So, the email address I give to slashdot would be slashdot@whatever.com, etc. It all gets forwarded to another email address, and my email client has a rule that moves all email to the alternate domain to a separate mailbox.
Re:What about my personal mail server? (Score:2, Interesting)
As least I can just log onto amazon and create me+amazon@myrealdomain.com without a thought.
Or, are you saying that mail to whomever1@whatever.com, whomever2@whatever.com will always forward on you you@myrealdomain.com?
It essentially is the same problem as having your "real" (final) e-mail address out there for the world to see... maybe worse, if you have it setup as a "catch-all
limit port 25 (Score:4, Insightful)
They can limit outbound port 25 because i still can forward my email through their official smtp server. If they limit inbound port 25, it will suck big time.
Re:limit port 25 (Score:2)
Moderators, think before you mod.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:limit port 25 (Score:2)
There's been a lengthy discussion on SPAM-L about this.
My suggestion has been to create a virus which would do it. Turn it loose on Friday, then on Monday all should be switched over.
You are wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:limit port 25 (Score:3, Informative)
Take what they say with a grain of salt (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Take what they say with a grain of salt (Score:2)
Re:Take what they say with a grain of salt (Score:2)
Which is why we need a RICO investigation of spamming. As long as it's treated by law enforcement as merely unpopular, the otherwise legitimate providers of services necessary for spam (ISPs, banks) will just take extra money -- over OR under the table -- to provide the
Re:Take what they say with a grain of salt (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, pink contracts aren't even necessary for spammers anymore. With major providers like MCI/UUNet, who will only kick off spammers if they spam from their space, and the wide availability of compromised systems to use as relays, spammers can have completely bulletproof hosting from the largest backbone provider without negotiating special contracts.
No specific technology proposals (Score:2)
Whatever... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whatever... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Whatever... (Score:3, Insightful)
New net protocols have always displaced old protocols without requiring a new internet. Like Gopher (et.al.), SMTP will soon fade away because it already doesn't work. At the current rate-of-increase of spam, allowing current SMTP email onto your network will soon become (if not has become already) the same as paying a gangster to DDo
press release on yahoo gives more info (Score:3, Informative)
Blocking outbound port 25 (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife was not so lucky. She was unable to send email a few weeks ago when our cable modem provider instituted outbound port 25 blocking. Luckily it's really easy to set postfix up to listen for smtp on another port as well - one quick config change and she was back in business. I'm planning to install openvpn for Windows on her box one of these days.
Re:Blocking outbound port 25 (Score:3, Interesting)
Openvpn rocks! I have started to use it for clients that I relay mail for, and back their systems up remotly. It works with Win32-Linux,Windows-Win32, Linix-Linux.
I run open VPN on my laptop and tunnel back to the mothership for access to all my local services at home too.
I have converted a few people using remote laptops over to it for various applications and it is pretty solid
Force customers to fix compromised boxes (Score:2)
Unfortunately, calling the customer and walking him through disinfection/reinstall costs too much money, so only very, very few ISPs do it at all.
Re:Force customers to fix compromised boxes (Score:2)
It's not really the ISP's job to fix their computer. It's a little like calling the phone company because your answering machine is broken.
Re:Force customers to fix compromised boxes (Score:2)
This is like calling the phone company to report that someone's phone box has been compromised and is being used to make anonymous obscene phone calls. Yes, it might be the user's property that is broken, but that property is still being used to abuse the phone system.
Re:Force customers to fix compromised boxes (Score:2)
Re:Force customers to fix compromised boxes (Score:2)
Hopefully most ISP's will do the same thing and the user will find it harder and harder to get internet service. Even if they do, it's still better than leaving the box connected continuously.
because the clueless user might not understand the root cause of being cut off.
Even the most clueless users understand that viruses are bad (it's usually the first th
Re:Force customers to fix compromised boxes (Score:2)
And that ISP will quickly discover that no one wants their packets.
because the clueless user might not understand the root cause of being cut off.
That's why you explain it to the clueless user, as one would a child. If they still don't understand, have a contract clause that allows the ISP to confiscate the customer's computer and burn it.
Re:Force customers to fix compromised boxes (Score:2)
Absolutely. But that should be the extent of what they are expected to do unless they have specifically sold computer tech support as part of their contract.
Re:Force customers to fix compromised boxes (Score:2)
They make money by providing connectivity. Almost in the same way, you could argue that companies are not responsible for pollution.
It's a little like calling the phone company because your answering machine is broken.
Your answering machine isn't fooling with SS#7 and telephone switches. Compromised home systems are known to wreak havoc in many ways, some of them very nasty.
Re:Force customers to fix compromised boxes (Score:2)
The ISP should be expected to cut the connectivity of the zombied computer. But cleaning it up is not their responsibility.
Your answering machine isn't fooling with SS#7 and telephone switches. Compromised home systems are known to wreak havoc in many ways, some of them very nasty.
Well, to extend the analogy, if your modem is calling up people at 2am, the phone company is not expected to fix your modem, but is expected to turn off your phone if you won't fix
How about "no more delayed bounces" (Score:5, Insightful)
Qmail, I'm looking at you. People who don't run something like LDAP on their secondary MXs, I'm looking at you.
I'm almost to the point of blocking the null sender from certain hosts, just because they are nothing but crap. I know all about the RFC (and rfc-ignorant.org), but they're causing a serious problem for the rest of the world.
The worst part is for people who run control panels like Plesk. They have to run qmail (no choice in the matter), and so they either become a delayed bounce source, or they enable the catchall and get to suck down all that mail. They can't win.
Re:How about "no more delayed bounces" (Score:2)
automatically refusing fake delayed bounces (Score:2)
Sure it's best if the message can be refused during the SMTP transaction rather than bounced after the fact. But sometimes that's not possible - for example in the case where a message has already been accepted by a backup mail exchanger or when the message is detected as un
ISP's need to act (Score:5, Insightful)
But, of course, that might cost the ISP's money. So instead we get a "best practice" document which preaches to the converted and achieves nothing.
TWW
No, it's a power grab. (Score:2)
No, this it the beginning of legislative effort. They clearly state this at the end of their press release. The object is to get laws passed about what ISPs do and to make the net easy for them to control. It's everything the people who designed the internet fought against and what is left will more resemble broadcast TV.
The goa
What about laptops (Score:2, Interesting)
Is VPN the only way to make mail reliable and consistent on laptops?
Re:What about laptops (Score:2)
Re:What about laptops (Score:2)
I support my remote users by having an smtp server that only accepts authenticated TLS connections. It was listening on port 25, because THAT'S THE PORT THAT WAS ASSIGNED FOR SMTP, but I'm going to have to move it elsewhere.
There doesn't appear to be a clear consensus for what port to use for authenticated smtp. Some people use 465 (assigned for SMTP over SSL), others seem to use 26, 2525, or 4025. I think I'm going to go along with stealing 26, because I want a
Re:What about laptops (Score:2)
Finally found the information I was looking for...
authenticated smtp is supposed to be on port 587.
SSH Tunnel (Score:2, Informative)
I used to just run sendmail directly on my PowerBook, but I got too many bounce messages from servers that refuse to accept mail from known dynamically allocated IP r
Re:What about laptops (Score:2)
Authenticated SMTP over SSL. The Auth part to be able to relay mail for users you trust, SSL to prevent their login details from being stolen by middlemen looking for relays.
*cough* *cough* (Score:3, Informative)
Out of this list of ISPs (AOL, Yahoo, MSN/Hotmail, Earthlink and Comcast), AOL is the ONLY ISP who is actively working in the antispam community - seriously. They've got a single contact for dealing with it and they are keeping their ax sharp and swinging it whenever needed.
All of those other 'posers are lying thru their teeth. Yahoo, MSN/Hotmail, Earthlink, Comcast? Antispam? They'd choke if they tried to say, "We're antispam". It's sad now that AOL has made a solic effort that they're going to be painted with the same brush as those other spam-havens.
it all works out for the ISPs (Score:3, Funny)
Protect your own domain name (Score:5, Insightful)
Something that would really help is for these big companies to protect their own domain names by going after anyone who forges the headers as such. These days if someone isn't already in my whitelist they are probably going to get caught in my spam filters if they use any of these domain names.
Under most circumstances I think it is a bad thing for a company to throw lawyers at someone until there is nothing left but a smoking hole in the ground, but I think I would make an exception for spammers. These companies not only have the resources to make spamming unprofitable, but they have a valid, and vested interest to do so.
Penalties (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Penalties (Score:5, Informative)
The California law made the "beneficiary" of the spam responsible for it. And anybody could sue. That would have made hiring a spammer very risky.
Broadly defining the "beneficiary" could go even further. The credit card service provider, and the bank behind them, could be held responsible for spam if they processed a transaction resulting from spam. They profit from it, after all. A good lawyer could make the case now that they bear some responsibility, especially if they assist in any way in concealing the identity of the spammer.
We really need to go after the payment end of spam, not the sending end.
Re:Penalties (Score:2)
Are you sure that a bullet to the head won't be more effective? I would certainly find such a solution far more satisfying.
Mail admin here, my solution was port 26 (Score:5, Interesting)
For a while the quick and dirty solution was to use webmail when in doubt but we needed something that people could live with and as much as I dislike M$ Outlook its a lot better than Horde, Neo, or Sruirrel Mail (IMO).
My 80% solution now is to handle SMTP on both ports 25 and, hehe, 26. So far so good, I'm able to go between the office and home on my laptop with no problems where as before Cox Cable wouldnt let me get to our SMTP server.
I'm wondering what other admins have had to do in this situation. I know I'm not alone here. And how do you think it will effect the propogation of spam in the future.
Re:Mail admin here, my solution was port 26 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mail admin here, my solution was port 26 (Score:2)
Re:Mail admin here, my solution was port 26 (Score:5, Informative)
Because port 587 is the one specified in the Message Submission RFC (RFC 2476).
Re:Mail admin here, my solution was port 26 (Score:2)
Re:Mail admin here, my solution was port 26 (Score:2)
Re:Mail admin here, my solution was port 26 (Score:2)
Re:Mail admin here, my solution was port 26 (Score:4, Interesting)
Um. Shouldn't you be fixing the problem, which is that you want these remote users to act as if they are part of your trusted corporate network? When you look at it this way, you realise that the best (and far more secure) solution is to be using an VPN into a DMZ that can access limited services needed for tele-commuters and road warriors.
Re:Mail admin here, my solution was port 26 (Score:2)
Re:Mail admin here, my solution was port 26 (Score:2)
might help if... (Score:2, Funny)
no preview pane! (Score:2)
The preview pane gets people in so much trouble, especially with Outlook/Express. Without harping over the potential for automatically triggering viruses, a lesser known problem is web bugs. These little images are linked from the email, and when they are retrie
Leverage Our Assets (Score:2)
Oops... uh
OK. I feel better now. We'll I'm off to carve my initials in a Moose and then herd some cats.
target audience (Score:4, Interesting)
It's very hard for any mail administrator to block mail from these large domains, because so much of the legitimate mail comes from their actual servers (wherever these are). I'd be happy to reject all mail addresses from msn.com or yahoo.com, but my users would see a huge increase in false positives. It's a no brainer to drop messages addresses from dailyoffers.com because I don't see any legit mail addresed from this domain anyway.
'bout time (Score:2)
Where are the best practices (Score:5, Interesting)
Best practices can encompass the RFCs and extend them to, well, best practices.
For example:
Per RFCs every place a domain is used it must be fully qualified and resolvable. In addition, the EHLO is supposed to be the primary hostname of the sending machine.
Anti-spam best practice might say that the machine name must resolve back to the connecting IP. Even better, the reverse entry for the IP must include the correct hostname. This way a receiving machine can determine who the sender claims to be, that the DNS entry for that name matches the IP (anyone can spoof the header but it's lots harder to get to the DNS of a legit operation) and that the reverse DNS shows the correct hostname (which would be harder on those who have low-end connections where they don't have control over the reverse DNS entries but no problem for most IT operations - anyone with a small operation can send through their ISP anyway).
If the major ISPs required just these items to match there would be a brief period of pain while everyone scrambles to fix broken systems but the gains from stopping viruses and spam would be enormous and tracing back to and blocking the remaining spam would be easier.
I also saw nothing about information sharing among the large ISPs so they could quickly act against a spammer or quickly disable the web accounts to which the spam is directing people (carefully, of course, or fake spam could be a means of a DOS attack).
Similarly, there was no mention of blocking email where the from address doesn't match the ISP. A couple years ago I dealt with massive backscatter from spam sent by an Earthlink customer THROUGH the Earthlink server. I tried to get an answer from them on why they were allowing someone to send out email "from" our domain when they have no relationship to us. Silence. Sure this is a pain for some people but people who want legitimate extra services can sign up for them. It's not so different than paying for a static extra IPs. If you want to send from a different domain we'll unblock it for you for a small monthly fee after determining that you are authorized to represent that domain.
This just scratches the surface but all in all this "best practices" is a joke.
Earthlink != Best Practices (Score:3, Interesting)
But they recently stopped their server-side spam filtering (Spaminator(tm)) and replaced it with client-side plugins. Overnight I started receiving thirty spams a day to an account that I have NEVER used. Besides the general annoyance that they are shuffling off anti-spam responsibilities to the customer, their plugins are for Windows Outlook and webmail only. (They say it's for Mac as well, but that's only a euphemism for "you must use webmail"). This is unacceptable.
What Constitutes a Need For Mail Servers? (Score:4, Interesting)
So is it necessary for me to run a mail server? No, I could technically survive without my own. Would it be a travesty if I were forced to switch to cut off spammers? Hell yes!
So until they draw the line on who "needs" to run a mail server, I can't possibly support this concept (or at least the port 25 restrictions piece of it).
Another point: web pages (Score:3, Interesting)
I understand that there is no silver bullet to end spam. But recommendation that this document does not address is the hosting of the web site advertised in the email. If spammers also could not find places to host their sites, the utility of spam (to the spammer) would significantly decrease.
The irony is that Yahoo appears to be fairly spammer-website friendly. They kill abusive Geocities pages fairly rapidly, but paying users appear to be basically bulletproof.
I've got one pet spammer (http://suburbanexpress.site.yahoo.net/) that's been hosted from Yahoo and spamming from an Ameritech DSL line since November, and neither will do anything about it.
Re:terrible ISPs (Score:2)
That said, I've been using DNSBL's for dynamic addresses for about a year and it has been VERY effective cutting worm / spam down by 60% or better. Local pattern matching on RDNS helps even more.
Re:Related article on Reuters (Score:3, Insightful)
If they keep getting fined and/or booted by ISPs then yes it is reasonable to expect it. After all, our public highways are safer because we expect people to learn to use vehicles and to also properly maintain them mechanically. If you drive around with no brakes and cause and accident you will be held accountable.
What would you prefer? When you have idiots g