Re: [Asrg] Email service assumptions and making system-wide changes

Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com> Mon, 16 January 2006 20:07 UTC

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From: Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com>
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Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 15:04:08 -0500
To: dcrocker@bbiw.net
Subject: Re: [Asrg] Email service assumptions and making system-wide changes
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I am surprised that after all these years the problem of spam is still
so fundamentally misunderstood.

The problem at this point are viral-infected zombie bot armies.

These provide massive e-mail distribution power and most importantly
anonymity and mobility allowing evasion.

I think we look at the msgs in our boxes and focus on the content and
imagine ourselves sending such a msg to someone else which leads to a
vastly oversimplified view of the situation.

Everyone gets dozens to hundreds of these spams per day (perhaps some
blocked but they're still being sent.) Services which handle mail
delivery get gazillions of these msgs per day, mostly addressed to
non-existant mailboxes or similar.

These dirtbags can't do this with legally operated (by them)
facilities.

Their economics don't warrant it.

Not even close.

So they deploy literally hundreds of thousands, in total often over a
million, virus-infected zombie bots for which they're not paying a
nickel for (or at least nothing in proportion to their rational market
worth, sure, even bankrobbers have to buy gasoline.)

And that's it.

THAT'S IT.

Stop or significantly slow that and they're defunct, they can't hit us
with billions of msgs per day for the paltry sums they're earning.

And even if they could afford it they'd lose that evasive mobility and
they'd be shut down or at least blocked at a low-level so quickly
they'd go find another profession like stealing people's pets for lab
research or whatever.

How to fix what I describe is a further discussion.

But for the love all that is good and right let's try to agree on what
the problem is.

It ain't some miscreant spinning an SMTP server on his laptop much
like any of us sending email only more fervently.

It's massive, organized criminal infection and exploitation of vast
zombie bot armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands of infected
PCs.

Get rid of that and the amount of "spam" you receive wouldn't be worth
chatting about.

You're welcome.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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