Re: [Asrg] Some data on the validity of MAIL FROM addresses

Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com> Thu, 22 May 2003 04:20 UTC

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From: Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com>
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To: Jon Kyme <jrk@merseymail.com>
Cc: Kee Hinckley <nazgul@somewhere.com>, ASRG <asrg@ietf.org>
Subject: Re: [Asrg] Some data on the validity of MAIL FROM addresses
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Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 00:12:10 -0400
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On May 21, 2003 at 08:59 jrk@merseymail.com (Jon Kyme) wrote:
 > I think that now we're all in agreement that 
 > (a) spam filtering should be per-user
 > (b) we should reject in SMTP where possible

Plus or minus begging the use of the conditional "should" I'm not
necessarily in agreement.

Unfortunately, spam is often (nearly) indistinguishable from a
denial-of-service attack.

As I've reported here previously I've had the same spam spewing
simultaneously from over 200 different IP addresses.

You can't limit your response to such an attack to walking up to each
door in the neighborhood and knocking and seeing if the lady or
gentleman of the house is available and waiting for them to pull some
clothes on so you can all sit down and have nice cup of coffee and
proceed to explore together whether this battery of incoming cluster
bombs moving at mach 2 might actually be something they want.

If you get my drift.

So, to paraphrase Kee's suggestion:

  > Spam is in the eye of the beholder.

So are denial of service attacks.

I claim spam is looking more and more like DoS than just a little
annoying junk to sort through.


-- 
        -Barry Shein

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