Login | Register For Free | Help
Search for: (Advanced)

Mailing List Archive: SPF: Discuss

SPF, DKIM, and NIH

 

 

First page Previous page 1 2 3 Next page Last page  View All SPF discuss RSS feed   Index | Next | Previous | View Threaded


macquigg at ece

Oct 16, 2009, 2:27 PM

Post #51 of 63 (2084 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

Ian Eiloart wrote:
>
> --On 16 October 2009 08:08:22 -0700 David MacQuigg
> <macquigg [at] ece> wrote:
>
>> Ian Eiloart wrote:
>>>
>>> --On 14 October 2009 15:08:15 -0700 David MacQuigg
>>> <macquigg [at] ece> wrote:
>>>
>>>> OK, I think I understand now what you mean by "sender". Sender
>>>> (individual author) addresses are worthless to identify bad senders.
>>>> See above.
>>>
>>> That's simply not my experience. I've seen spear phishing attacks from
>>> gmail accounts that are listed on blacklists. The blacklisting of
>>> sender addresses does have value to me.
>>
>> I wasn't aware of any blacklists of individual sender addresses. I
>> would
>> like to give it a try. Where can I find one?
>
> <http://www.scamnailer.info/> has a script that will update
> spamassassin or clamav configurations with a list of about 14k
> addresses that have been used for scamming. I think the S/A rules
> generalises from those addresses a little.

I'm having a hard time believing this actually works. Of the spam
hitting your receiver, what percent is rejected by finding a *bad*
individual sender address on the scamnailer list?

It just doesn't make sense that a spammer with an unlimited supply of
free unknown addresses would continue using a specific individual sender
address that is known worldwide as "bad". Why not just switch to the
next "unknown" name. Unknown is always better than definitely bad.

>>> But, there's a bigger picture here. I'd like to rate-limit new senders
>>> that haven't earned a good reputation. I can do that for individual
>>> gmail users, but can't apply the same rate limit to all gmail users.
>>
>> I would rather not try to separate good from bad within Gmail. That is
>> really Gmail's responsibility. I just rate the entire mailflow from
>> Gmail to our receivers. Whitelisting of individual Gmail authors can be
>> done by our individual recipients.
>
> Absolutely, but you want to check the DKIM signature before applying
> the whitelist. Otherwise, every whitelist entry is an invitation to spam.

I've never seen it happen. A spammer would have to know both addresses
exactly. If an individual recipient whitelists an individual sender, we
pass it straight through, without SPF, DKIM, SpamAssassin, or anything
else that might cause a false reject.

-- Dave


-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


stuart at bmsi

Oct 16, 2009, 3:11 PM

Post #52 of 63 (2088 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009, David MacQuigg wrote:

> > Absolutely, but you want to check the DKIM signature before applying the
> > whitelist. Otherwise, every whitelist entry is an invitation to spam.
>
> I've never seen it happen. A spammer would have to know both addresses
> exactly. If an individual recipient whitelists an individual sender, we pass
> it straight through, without SPF, DKIM, SpamAssassin, or anything else that
> might cause a false reject.

We get lots of forgeries of whitelisted addresses. If such a sender doesn't
provide an SPF record, I guess one and add it to a DNS zone used for the
purpose.

How do the spammers know? Well, as soon as they infect a PC, they
get all the addresses from the M$ AddressBook and phone home. Even
after the PC is cleaned or reinstalled, other zombies all over the world
continue to spew forth forged email from emails of OutLook accounts to
emails in the AddressBook.

--
Stuart D. Gathman <stuart [at] bmsi>
Business Management Systems Inc. Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.


-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


macquigg at ece

Oct 16, 2009, 4:02 PM

Post #53 of 63 (2084 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

Stuart D. Gathman wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Oct 2009, David MacQuigg wrote:
>
>
>>> Absolutely, but you want to check the DKIM signature before applying the
>>> whitelist. Otherwise, every whitelist entry is an invitation to spam.
>>>
>> I've never seen it happen. A spammer would have to know both addresses
>> exactly. If an individual recipient whitelists an individual sender, we pass
>> it straight through, without SPF, DKIM, SpamAssassin, or anything else that
>> might cause a false reject.
>>
>
> We get lots of forgeries of whitelisted addresses. If such a sender doesn't
> provide an SPF record, I guess one and add it to a DNS zone used for the
> purpose.
>
> How do the spammers know? Well, as soon as they infect a PC, they
> get all the addresses from the M$ AddressBook and phone home. Even
> after the PC is cleaned or reinstalled, other zombies all over the world
> continue to spew forth forged email from emails of OutLook accounts to
> emails in the AddressBook.
>

Ah, good point. I've gotten one of those myself, sent from a neighbor's
computer, an ad for a male enhancement product. I called her - "Connie,
are you trying to tell me something?" :>) She didn't think it was
funny. :>(

Seriously, though, I can't see changing our setup. This is a tiny
fraction of the spam hitting our receiver. The best way to deal with it
is let the recipient call his/her correspondent, and get them to stop
putting their real address in chain letters.

-- Dave



-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


sandy at cypressintegrated

Oct 16, 2009, 4:06 PM

Post #54 of 63 (2082 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

> How do the spammers know? Well, as soon as they infect a PC, they
> get all the addresses from the M$ AddressBook and phone home.

+1 on the prevalence of this maneuver. OE and OL are the most common
targets since they are by far the most popular locally installed MUAs,
but the same can be done with plenty of other software as well. My The
Bat! ADBs are trivially extractable. Once you have admin access to the
machine, reading such lightly encoded or plain-text data is trivial.
The only thing that could make it difficult is the MUA getting an
exclusive lock on the files; even then, a trojan can sniff POP3 and
SMTP streams directly.

In all, I was surprised to see these tactics treated as improbable.

-- Sandy



-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


spf-discuss at winserver

Oct 16, 2009, 6:06 PM

Post #55 of 63 (2086 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

It is good to see a rebirth of SPF + DKIM integration discussions.

The issue, as it always been, is the complexity and the different ways
and "philosophies" systems operate under. Rest assured, your "Exim"
installation is not the same as the next guys "ABC" product
installation. I can't say our "Wildcat!" system operates the same as
others. Quite often its a battle of the Old vs New School of
thoughts. As I always experience in multiple mail networks old and
current, the contention were visible when there was Developers and
Operators philosophical conflicts. It is no different here.

So you need to come up with a common methodology that has sound
engineering, most will follow either by standard or best practice.

SPF or rather the LMAP DOMAIN::IP assertion and methodology got
immediate traction because it was simply to follow and more
importantly fit into the framework with an easy implementation. It
also came at a time where domain spoofing exploitations cause a HUGE
back scatter problem leveraged by the infamous 2002/2003 SORBIG
Accept/Bounce eVirus. MARID and thus SPF was a result of this SORBIG
problem highlight the major problem.

ADSP has/had that same potential for easy implementation and fit into
the framework with a DOMAIN::POLICY assertion methodology.

One is 821 technology, the other is 822 technology. Only
implementators can dictate an integrated solution - not a IETF
solution, maybe a BCP document. But no dictation that both need to be
used or one depend on the other. Again, the vendor, local policy
operator might love to do this, but the vendor/operator can't mandate
to other vendors/operators thats how its should done.

Anyway, it would serve no justice attempting to summarize years of R&D
on all this in one post, but to only say, keep it simple, come up with
something that fits MOST implementations in plug and play fashion. And
if possible, try to keep highly subjective ideas out of the solution.

--
Hector Santos, CTO
http://www.santronics.com


Michael Deutschmann wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Oct 2009, Scott Kitterman wrote:
>> This is where I think you go astray. DKIM has no requirement for the "d"
>> domain and the body from domain to match. So really all you are saying is
>
> DKIM doesn't. DKIM/ADSP does, although signatures with "wrong" d= are
> ignored rather than considered errors -- a fact my proposal counts on.
>
> DKIM was built to allow for third-party signatures, but at present there is
> no standard way to indicate that signatures other than that for the From:
> domain *are required*. That's what I want to fix.
>
>> check if the domain used in mail from has a DKIM key record? If so, that's
>> a problem because you need to go to DATA to get the signature to find out
>> what the selector is.
>
> No, at MAIL FROM: time you check whether the SPF record has a flag
> indicating an envelope signing policy (such as my "fm=dkim" suggestion).
> If the flag is set, you know, before seeing the DATA yourself, that either
> the message will have a valid signature with d= matching the Return-path:,
> or it is forged.
>
> The test is more expensive than SPF, but when supported it is more accurate,
> since it is as immune as DKIM/ADSP to the forwarder problem.
>
>
> And remember, if SPF returns fail *and* you are sure the message is
> not a forward, you are still allowed to reject the message without ever
> looking at the DATA.
>
> ---- Michael Deutschmann <michael [at] talamasca>





-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


spf-discuss at winserver

Oct 16, 2009, 6:37 PM

Post #56 of 63 (2085 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

Ian Eiloart wrote:

>
> --On 16 October 2009 10:11:50 -0400 "Stuart D. Gathman"
>>
>> The REJECT itself is the feedback. The spammer manually
>> or automatically adjusts the camouflage for the spam until
>> it no longer gets rejected.
>
> Right, but I'll bet that's not universal. For example we saw
> a big drop in attempted virus deliveries when we started
> rejecting them at smtp time. My theory is that the spambots
> went and knocked on someone else's
> door when they realised they weren't delivering to us.


I found the moment one thinks there is a pattern, it goes away, and
may or may not come back. That includes thinking that you frustrated
a system enough to stop and seen far too often during our 2003 to 2005
automated AVS statistics collection that they come back.

http://www.winserver.com/public/antispam

So I think its purely randomly cyclic. They really don't care what
you have, they are going to do blitz attacks not carrying whether you
stop them or not. But boy of boy, they believe they have the
advantage if even 0.01% of a million addresses gets in. Once they need
to demonstrate to potential customers is that mail acceptance is
possible with their harvest of users. They really don't care if its
discarded. Showing Mail Acceptance perpetuates the problem.

Anyway, some clear results of this research did help mold our
anti-spam products are:

- The majority of the filters is found with EHLO/HELO domain ip
literal mismatches. If the client issues a bracketed ip
literal [x.x.x.x] then it is required to match the client
connection IP.

- Delay Mail From Validation is VERY efficent with a 60%
reduction on DNS lookup. RFC 2821 actually gives you
a hint to follow this approach, wait for RCPT TO is
validated before attempted to validate MAIL FROM. This
is shown with the 2003 December delay validation introduction
in the above web page.

- 80% of the time 821.MAILFROM = 822.FROM. This told
me that Microsoft's PAYLOAD version of SPF (SenderID)
was wasteful compared to the SMTP level SPF check.

BTW, soon will update the statistics system to include Greylisting
that was added, and also DKIM. Once again we will be able to see how
it fits and scales. It is pretty clear that it will take a while for
ADSP stats are collected. You can see that with the SPF (LMAP) volume
growth over the years from 0.0% in 2003 to 1.8% when we finished this
in 2006. I wonder what that percentage would be today in 2009.

--
Hector Santos, CTO
http://www.santronics.com



-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


spf-discuss at winserver

Oct 16, 2009, 7:15 PM

Post #57 of 63 (2081 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

Hector Santos wrote:

> Anyway, some clear results of this research did help mold our anti-spam
> products are:
>
> - The majority of the filters is found with EHLO/HELO domain ip
> literal mismatches. If the client issues a bracketed ip
> literal [x.x.x.x] then it is required to match the client
> connection IP.
>
> - Delay Mail From Validation is VERY efficent with a 60%
> reduction on DNS lookup. RFC 2821 actually gives you
> a hint to follow this approach, wait for RCPT TO is
> validated before attempted to validate MAIL FROM. This
> is shown with the 2003 December delay validation introduction
> in the above web page.
>
> - 80% of the time 821.MAILFROM = 822.FROM. This told
> me that Microsoft's PAYLOAD version of SPF (SenderID)
> was wasteful compared to the SMTP level SPF check.

I would like to add that a good amount of the EHLO/HELO filters is
based on the fact that many BULK spammers do not follow SMTP
multi-line responses.

So by simply adding a multiple "220-" welcome response like a system
policy that AOL.COM has:

220-rly-mf03.mx.aol.com ESMTP mail_relay_in-mf03.8; Fri, 16 Oct 2009
22:09:58 -0
400
220-America Online (AOL) and its affiliated companies do not
220- authorize the use of its proprietary computers and computer
220- networks to accept, transmit, or distribute unsolicited bulk
220- e-mail sent from the internet. Effective immediately: AOL
220- may no longer accept connections from IP addresses which
220 have no reverse-DNS (PTR record) assigned.

or we offer to operators by default:

220-winserver.com Wildcat! ESMTP Server v6.3.452.9 ready
220-************** WARNING: FOR AUTHORIZED USE ONLY!
**********************
220-* THIS SYSTEM DO NOT AUTHORIZE THE USE OF ITS PROPRIETARY
COMPUTERS *
220-* AND COMPUTER NETWORKS TO ACCEPT, TRANSMIT, OR DISTRIBUTE
UNSOLICITED *
220-* BULK E-MAIL SENT FROM THE INTERNET. THIS SYSTEM WILL RESTRICT
ACCESS *
220-* TO CAN-SPAM (US S. 877) COMPLIANT CLIENTS ONLY.
*
220
************************************************************************

This will immediately STOP bulk spammers who are blasting systems and
ignoring SMTP continuation lines.

They are waiting for a "220 " (no dash) as the very first line. They
don't get it, and either drop away or the server times them out.

So begin with some simple SMTP compliant requirement rules and you
will filter a MAJOR percentage of your spam.

Note: It was very rare that a legitimate MAIL USER using a broken
client was found and when that happen, they fixed the situation. In
other words:

Bad guys do not complain or report problems! However,
Good guys do report issues and the rare small exceptions
they were quickly addressed one way or another.



--
Hector Santos, CTO
http://www.santronics.com





-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


iane at sussex

Oct 19, 2009, 2:02 AM

Post #58 of 63 (2084 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

--On 16 October 2009 21:37:20 -0400 Hector Santos
<spf-discuss [at] winserver> wrote:


>
> http://www.winserver.com/public/antispam
>
> So I think its purely randomly cyclic. They really don't care what you
> have, they are going to do blitz attacks not carrying whether you stop
> them or not.

Well, they have finite (if cheap) resources. If a compromised PC has a list
of recipients to send mail to, then why continue to send mail to a site
that is consistently rejecting the mail? Surely *some* spammers must be
smart enough to not keep hammering on a closed door.



--
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
01273-873148 x3148
For new support requests, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/help/


-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


iane at sussex

Oct 19, 2009, 2:13 AM

Post #59 of 63 (2084 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

--On 16 October 2009 14:27:28 -0700 David MacQuigg
<macquigg [at] ece> wrote:

>
>> <http://www.scamnailer.info/> has a script that will update
>> spamassassin or clamav configurations with a list of about 14k
>> addresses that have been used for scamming. I think the S/A rules
>> generalises from those addresses a little.
>
> I'm having a hard time believing this actually works. Of the spam
> hitting your receiver, what percent is rejected by finding a *bad*
> individual sender address on the scamnailer list?

I've seen successful spear phishing attacks that would have failed if we'd
implemented this check at the time. The proportion doesn't much matter.
It's the harm avoided that matters.

> It just doesn't make sense that a spammer with an unlimited supply of
> free unknown addresses would continue using a specific individual sender
> address that is known worldwide as "bad". Why not just switch to the
> next "unknown" name. Unknown is always better than definitely bad.

Phishers seem to spend quite a significant amount of effort obtaining
addresses with good reputation. For example, I've seen an exchange of
emails with a sceptical user, wondering why "we" were asking her for her
password when she'd seen our anti-phishing posters. The phisher said "yes,
I know, but in this case we really need it." After a few exchanges, she
gave up her password.

I've seen academic accounts used for spamming, for a period of several
weeks. Usually, such sites will stamp on abuse quite quickly, but not
always. It's well worth having an infrastructure that's capable of
punishing the account without harming the business relationship that relies
on. In fact, I'd welcome an infrastructure that could effectively turn off
one of my accounts without getting me out of bed - provided it was free of
false positives. I'd certainly prefer it to having my domain switched off.


--
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
01273-873148 x3148
For new support requests, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/help/


-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


iane at sussex

Oct 19, 2009, 2:19 AM

Post #60 of 63 (2080 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

--On 16 October 2009 19:06:02 -0400 Sanford Whiteman
<sandy [at] cypressintegrated> wrote:

>> How do the spammers know? Well, as soon as they infect a PC, they
>> get all the addresses from the M$ AddressBook and phone home.
>
> +1 on the prevalence of this maneuver. OE and OL are the most common
> targets since they are by far the most popular locally installed MUAs,
> but the same can be done with plenty of other software as well. My The
> Bat! ADBs are trivially extractable. Once you have admin access to the
> machine, reading such lightly encoded or plain-text data is trivial.
> The only thing that could make it difficult is the MUA getting an
> exclusive lock on the files; even then, a trojan can sniff POP3 and
> SMTP streams directly.

But not, presumably, TLS, imaps, pop3s and smpts protected streams? Which
is why it's nice to see many clients now using SSL/TLS by default. Apple
Mail and Outlook are examples.

> In all, I was surprised to see these tactics treated as improbable.
>
> -- Sandy
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
> Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
> Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/
> [http://www.listbox.com/member/]
>
> Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
> RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
> Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com



--
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
01273-873148 x3148
For new support requests, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/help/


-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


macquigg at ece

Oct 19, 2009, 7:01 AM

Post #61 of 63 (2081 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

Ian Eiloart wrote:
>
> --On 16 October 2009 14:27:28 -0700 David MacQuigg
> <macquigg [at] ece> wrote:
>
>>>>>> OK, I think I understand now what you mean by "sender". Sender
>>>>>> (individual author) addresses are worthless to identify bad senders.
>>>>>> See above.
>>>>>
>>>>> That's simply not my experience. I've seen spear phishing attacks
>>>>> from
>>>>> gmail accounts that are listed on blacklists. The blacklisting of
>>>>> sender addresses does have value to me.
>>>>
>>>> I wasn't aware of any blacklists of individual sender addresses. I
>>>> would
>>>> like to give it a try. Where can I find one?
>>>
>>> <http://www.scamnailer.info/> has a script that will update
>>> spamassassin or clamav configurations with a list of about 14k
>>> addresses that have been used for scamming. I think the S/A rules
>>> generalises from those addresses a little.
>>
>> I'm having a hard time believing this actually works. Of the spam
>> hitting your receiver, what percent is rejected by finding a *bad*
>> individual sender address on the scamnailer list?
>
> I've seen successful spear phishing attacks that would have failed if
> we'd implemented this check at the time. The proportion doesn't much
> matter. It's the harm avoided that matters.

"Would have" is not enough. Too many websites like this are selling
snake oil. Let us know when you have some actual experience using a
product or service.

Effectiveness (percent rejected) does matter. Even if the product were
free, the install and admin costs would need to be justified by more
than one remarkable instance. With spam and phishing, the game is
numbers. Criminals get about one in 12 million "click through". Good
anti-spam services get well over 99% blocking. A technique that blocks
less than 1% is not worth considering.

>> It just doesn't make sense that a spammer with an unlimited supply of
>> free unknown addresses would continue using a specific individual sender
>> address that is known worldwide as "bad". Why not just switch to the
>> next "unknown" name. Unknown is always better than definitely bad.
>
> Phishers seem to spend quite a significant amount of effort obtaining
> addresses with good reputation. For example, I've seen an exchange of
> emails with a sceptical user, wondering why "we" were asking her for
> her password when she'd seen our anti-phishing posters. The phisher
> said "yes, I know, but in this case we really need it." After a few
> exchanges, she gave up her password.

Some users are beyond help. They need a bad experience to learn how to
recognize phishing. In fact, I would argue that getting rid of *all*
phishing would lead to less frequent, but more serious problems. We
need at least a few "fire drills" to keep users alert.

> I've seen academic accounts used for spamming, for a period of several
> weeks. Usually, such sites will stamp on abuse quite quickly, but not
> always. It's well worth having an infrastructure that's capable of
> punishing the account without harming the business relationship that
> relies on. In fact, I'd welcome an infrastructure that could
> effectively turn off one of my accounts without getting me out of bed
> - provided it was free of false positives. I'd certainly prefer it to
> having my domain switched off.

Just keep the domain owner informed as you lower their reputation, and
the good ones will take care of the problem promptly. There is no need
to "switch off" a domain. Once their reputation has dropped from A to
C, it can stay that way forever. C is the same as unknown. All mail
from unknown domains can be processed by your normal spam filtering
setup, and sorted into a quarantine, depending on the spam score of the
message.

-- Dave



-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


iane at sussex

Oct 21, 2009, 3:27 AM

Post #62 of 63 (2076 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

--On 19 October 2009 07:01:57 -0700 David MacQuigg
<macquigg [at] ece> wrote:

> "Would have" is not enough. Too many websites like this are selling
> snake oil. Let us know when you have some actual experience using a
> product or service.

It's enough to me to know that the address was listed on the date that this
particular phishing event occurred. That's not snake oil.

> Effectiveness (percent rejected) does matter. Even if the product were
> free, the install and admin costs would need to be justified by more than
> one remarkable instance. With spam and phishing, the game is numbers.
> Criminals get about one in 12 million "click through". Good anti-spam
> services get well over 99% blocking. A technique that blocks less than
> 1% is not worth considering.

The one thing that particularly concerns me at the moment is spear
phishing; I investigate every report that I get, spending between 10
minutes and an entire working day, depending on the severity. It impacts on
the security of my site. Spear phishing is less than 1% of the unwanted
mail that we see. Probably less than 0.01%, but it's the biggest problem
that we have.

If we can reduce the number of spear phishing emails that we deliver even
by just 50%, that's a real benefit for our site.

--
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
01273-873148 x3148
For new support requests, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/help/


-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com


spf-discuss at winserver

Oct 21, 2009, 6:00 AM

Post #63 of 63 (2088 views)
Permalink
Re: SPF, DKIM, and NIH [In reply to]

Ian Eiloart wrote:

>
>
> --On 16 October 2009 21:37:20 -0400 Hector Santos
> <spf-discuss [at] winserver> wrote:
>>
>> http://www.winserver.com/public/antispam
>>
>> So I think its purely randomly cyclic. They really don't care what you
>> have, they are going to do blitz attacks not carrying whether you stop
>> them or not.
>
> Well, they have finite (if cheap) resources. If a compromised PC has a
> list of recipients to send mail to, then why continue to send mail to a
> site that is consistently rejecting the mail? Surely *some* spammers
> must be smart enough to not keep hammering on a closed door.


You would think so, and I agree with you.

But based on the above web site 3-4 years of statistics for my own
site and the same statistics gathering from selected customers, just
when you think you got them, PUFF, here they come again.

I truly believe that the big spammers, the ones that are networked,
work on a random basis or some "secret formula" scheduling.

I can see that clearly, and I think you would too with the setup:

1) Prepare the SMTP receivers

Multi-threaded, Worker Queue SMTP Receiver machine. 5 threads
of 5 processes you can concurrently spawn should be sufficient.

2) Prepare the trap

2.1) Add a system policy at the 220 response that outputs a
multiline response.

2.2) or Add a EHLO ip literal compare with connection IP.
drop if they don't match.

What you will see is a regular blast of 4-5 client IPs in a group.
You might see this through the day. You might see it go away for a
day or so or even a week. Then it comes back.

I even thought:

"Maybe if I let them through (remove the system policy and
EHLO IP trap), they will satisfy their goals and stop."

No, same thing. Go Away, Come back, Go away, come back in random fashion.

Let me see if I can get a few sets of this mornings log....

20091021 02:16:00 (01DD) Invalid EHLO [124.82.231.78] client address
[219.95.72.186]
20091021 02:16:02 (020B) Invalid EHLO [124.82.231.78] client address
[219.95.72.186]
20091021 02:16:02 (01C7) Invalid EHLO [124.82.231.78] client address
[219.95.72.186]

These dropped due to the multiline response:

20091021 03:02:23 (00A1) EHLO: Incoming connection: [114.143.139.8]
[114.143.139.8]
20091021 03:02:23 (011F) EHLO: Incoming connection: [114.143.139.8]
[114.143.139.8]
20091021 03:02:23 (00D6) EHLO: Incoming connection: [114.143.139.8]
[114.143.139.8]
20091021 03:02:23 (00B6) EHLO: Incoming connection: [114.143.139.8]
[114.143.139.8]

I see these come in with no other activity, are they related?

20091021 04:36:56 (01A5) Invalid HELO 59.15.251.213 client address
[59.15.251.213]
20091021 04:37:59 (01DC) Invalid HELO 78.26.161.33 client address
[78.26.161.33]
20091021 04:38:55 (0256) Invalid EHLO ???? client address
[218.145.201.108]
20091021 04:38:56 (0256) Invalid HELO ???? client address
[218.145.201.108]

And so on. I have a colorized log statistics viewer making it easy to
visualize a color spectrum-like spread of attacks.

Of course, just now, looking at these morning logs I can say, "wow,
pretty good, not as bad as you seen before. Maybe they got smarter."

Well, I would probably lean more towards they were put of out business
with the FBI recent big spammer cases in the last year or so. I
recall maybe 4-5 months ago a group of our sysops in support list
saying they had a major reduction of system attacks after the some big
FBI case this year putting a large spammer out of business. I looked
at my logs too and saw a major slow down myself. But then the
following week - Puff, it seem to pick up again.

Of course, everyone mileage will differ, but that is my experience here.

---
HLS



-------------------------------------------
Sender Policy Framework: http://www.openspf.org [http://www.openspf.org]
Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/ [http://www.listbox.com/member/]

Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/735/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/735/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com

First page Previous page 1 2 3 Next page Last page  View All SPF discuss RSS feed   Index | Next | Previous | View Threaded
 
 


Interested in having your list archived? Contact Gossamer Threads
 
  Web Applications & Managed Hosting Powered by Gossamer Threads Inc.