Re: BGP blackholing spam [was Spammer Bust]

• To: nanog@merit.edu
• Subject: Re: BGP blackholing spam [was Spammer Bust]
• From: Paul A Vixie <paul@vix.com>
• Date: Sat, 06 Sep 1997 11:14:09 -0700
• In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 06 Sep 1997 11:55:11 EDT." <Pine.BSD.3.91.970906114336.13417B-100000@apollo.carroll.com>
• Sender: owner-nanog@merit.edu

>  Is  it  possible to get the list of sites included in this feed. Paul Vixie
>  used to publish these site on his web site, but the "Rogue" sites area  has
>  been  taken  down.  Apparently  a  large number of list "memebers" threaten
>  legal action. They alleged some used this list as a  list  of  targets  for
>  retaliation.

http://spam.abuse.net/ is hosted on a vixie machine but not edited by any
vixie people.  scott hazen mueller, a former employee here, is in charge
of that page.  i have no editorial input at all other than as an individual
contributor.  in other details, the above paragraph is factually correct.

>  We  were  freuquent reviewers of the list. We used the information there to
>  update our sendmail filters. We were very dissapointed to see it go.
>   
>  The  only  trouble  I have with Paul's list was it occasionally needed fine
>  tuning by hand. Some sites had to be permitted, even though they  may  have
>  been  guilty  of  UCE. On one occasion, they had an ISP on their list. This
>  ISP was close enough to us in geographic region that it was  reasonable  to
>  expect  some of our users were emailing users on their system. We could not
>  therefore black hole them.

thank you for that explaination.  the black hole list is not for everybody,
though i believe that with the "fine tuning" you described, it can be of use
to anybody who wants to do more work and get less spam.

>  It  would  seem  to  me  that  this  would  be more serious if this were an
>  automatic feed, sent directly to our routers. There  would  be  no  way  to
>  review the sites on the list before they were blocked.
>  
>  Perhaps  Paul  would create a mailing list for network operators interested
>  in receiving his blackhole list. As new updates to  the  group  were  made,
>  they  could  be  sent  to  the  list.  So as not to appear as though we are
>  looking for something for nothing, we would be willing to donate  resources
>  to run the list.

because of my cease-and-desist problem, and my very real worries about
"conspiracy in restraint of trade", i will not make the list available
other than through a protocol like BGP/TCP which allows me to revoke an
entry from the list in real time and without anyone else's participation.