Mailing List Archive

Good luck. Last time we heard back from them they were trying to extort
us for $18,000 to have a huge block of Ips removed. They were listed from
the day we received them from arin. After that we gave up on SORBS.



On 4/4/12 3:53 PM, "Chris Conn" <cconn@b2b2c.ca> wrote:

>Hello,
>
>Is anyone from SORBS still listening? We have a few IP addresses here
>and there that are listed, one in particular that has been for a spam
>incident from over a year ago. The "last spam" date is 03/05/2011
>according to their lookup tools.
>
>We don't have access to their Net Manager even if our ARIN POC
>corresponds to the account on their system we opened a while ago. We
>use their ISP feedback form and never get any responses back.
>
>Is SORBS still relevant and functional?
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Chris Conn
>B2B2C.ca
>

They're still functional, still used by companies but I wouldn't make
any observation on them running 'well'. A friend's office IP range got
blocked and unblocked recently by them so they do seem to remove entries.

Beyond that on NANOG you're pretty much into "light blue touch paper and
retire to a safe distance" territory even mentioning them. There is a
good chance you might get a reply from Sorbs here, they almost always
seem to respond when things get raised on NANOG.

Paul

On 04/04/2012 09:53 AM, Chris Conn wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Is anyone from SORBS still listening? We have a few IP addresses
> here and there that are listed, one in particular that has been for a
> spam incident from over a year ago. The "last spam" date is
> 03/05/2011 according to their lookup tools.
>
> We don't have access to their Net Manager even if our ARIN POC
> corresponds to the account on their system we opened a while ago. We
> use their ISP feedback form and never get any responses back.
>
> Is SORBS still relevant and functional?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Chris Conn
> B2B2C.ca
>

On 4 April 2012 12:53, Chris Conn <cconn@b2b2c.ca> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Is anyone from SORBS still listening? We have a few IP addresses here
> and there that are listed, one in particular that has been for a spam
> incident from over a year ago. The "last spam" date is 03/05/2011
> according to their lookup tools.
>
> We don't have access to their Net Manager even if our ARIN POC corresponds
> to the account on their system we opened a while ago. We use their ISP
> feedback form and never get any responses back.
>
> Is SORBS still relevant and functional?
>

I've been trying to login to their 'support' interface for a while now.
Emails from them for creating a new account or trying to recover a
password for an existing account don't actually come to me. I actually
wrote Girish from the company that purchased SORBS (Proofpoint) about it
(also CC'd here) and I have had no reply whatsoever either.

I think we should all just NULL ROUTE all of their IP space on our borders
to get their attention.

Regards,
Landon

Landon Stewart wrote:
> I think we should all just NULL ROUTE all of their IP space on our borders
> to get their attention.

Yeah you're free to do that, as well as complain about it and SORBS in
turn is free to put whatever the hell they feel like on their block
lists and not remove it at all, ever, for whatever reason.

One common theme I did notice in the countless and, dare I say, tiresome
complaints about SORBS is that it hardly ever helps and may even make it
worse.

It's best to not complain about it and just accept it as a fact of life
your IPs are listed on SORBS and move on. It's not the end of the world.

Greetings,
Jeroen

--
Earthquake Magnitude: 3.0
Date: Wednesday, April 4, 2012 20:59:13 UTC
Location: Baja California, Mexico
Latitude: 32.6142; Longitude: -115.8417
Depth: 2.90 km

On Wed, Apr 04, 2012 at 01:55:46PM -0700, Landon Stewart wrote:
> On 4 April 2012 12:53, Chris Conn <cconn@b2b2c.ca> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > Is anyone from SORBS still listening? We have a few IP addresses here
> > and there that are listed, one in particular that has been for a spam
> > incident from over a year ago. The "last spam" date is 03/05/2011
> > according to their lookup tools.
> >
> > We don't have access to their Net Manager even if our ARIN POC corresponds
> > to the account on their system we opened a while ago. We use their ISP
> > feedback form and never get any responses back.
> >
> > Is SORBS still relevant and functional?
> >
>
> I've been trying to login to their 'support' interface for a while now.
> Emails from them for creating a new account or trying to recover a
> password for an existing account don't actually come to me. I actually
> wrote Girish from the company that purchased SORBS (Proofpoint) about it
> (also CC'd here) and I have had no reply whatsoever either.
>
> I think we should all just NULL ROUTE all of their IP space on our borders
> to get their attention.

By a happy coincidence, I got mail today from Scott Greco of Proofpoint,
asking if we could get together to discuss their products. I've replied
to that with a summary of this thread, and am Cc:ing him on this mail, as
well. Maybe we can get their attention, though past experience with SORBS
does not exactly imbue me with confidence.

--
Mike Andrews, W5EGO
mikea@mikea.ath.cx
Tired old sysadmin

Hi,

We had an issue with one of our old subnets which was used as a
pool for dynamic dial-up in the past, which we now use for virtual hosting.

It took a few me a few hours but I was able to get it removed from
the DUHL list.
( And a few walk around the block to calm me down after dealing
with their robot =D ).

As for being removed from their SPAM RBL that might be another story..

Actually knowing Chris, and his outfit, that 18k request seems
unwarranted :(

As for SORBS, they have a ticket system at
http://support.sorbs.net/ which use the same username/password as
https://www.us.sorbs.net. You can follow up there with your ticket #,
if their robot is being a bit too fascist.
( ecarbonel was the guy that help us in our case )

PS: The ticketing system is not that fast, so be patient.

/wave Chris

-----
Alain Hebert ahebert@pubnix.net
PubNIX Inc.
50 boul. St-Charles
P.O. Box 26770 Beaconsfield, Quebec H9W 6G7
Tel: 514-990-5911 http://www.pubnix.net Fax: 514-990-9443


On 04/04/12 16:55, Landon Stewart wrote:
> On 4 April 2012 12:53, Chris Conn<cconn@b2b2c.ca> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Is anyone from SORBS still listening? We have a few IP addresses here
>> and there that are listed, one in particular that has been for a spam
>> incident from over a year ago. The "last spam" date is 03/05/2011
>> according to their lookup tools.
>>
>> We don't have access to their Net Manager even if our ARIN POC corresponds
>> to the account on their system we opened a while ago. We use their ISP
>> feedback form and never get any responses back.
>>
>> Is SORBS still relevant and functional?
>>
> I've been trying to login to their 'support' interface for a while now.
> Emails from them for creating a new account or trying to recover a
> password for an existing account don't actually come to me. I actually
> wrote Girish from the company that purchased SORBS (Proofpoint) about it
> (also CC'd here) and I have had no reply whatsoever either.
>
> I think we should all just NULL ROUTE all of their IP space on our borders
> to get their attention.
>
> Regards,
> Landon
>

On 4 April 2012 14:21, Jeroen van Aart <jeroen@mompl.net> wrote:

> Landon Stewart wrote:
>
>> I think we should all just NULL ROUTE all of their IP space on our borders
>> to get their attention.
>>
>
> Yeah you're free to do that, as well as complain about it and SORBS in
> turn is free to put whatever the hell they feel like on their block lists
> and not remove it at all, ever, for whatever reason.
>

The latter part of that sentence has already been confirmed for years now.


> It's best to not complain about it and just accept it as a fact of life
> your IPs are listed on SORBS and move on. It's not the end of the world.
>

It turns into a customer service issue for most service providers.

On 4 April 2012 14:27, Alain Hebert <ahebert@pubnix.net> wrote:

> As for SORBS, they have a ticket system at http://support.sorbs.net/which use the same username/password as
> https://www.us.sorbs.net. You can follow up there with your ticket #, if
> their robot is being a bit too fascist. ( ecarbonel was the guy that help
> us in our case )
>

Yeah that's my main complaint right now is that we can't get into their
ticket system *or* register a new account for our AS. The new account
registration email never gets received for confirmation. The account we
used to use doesn't work despite it being somewhere around 7 years old.


> PS: The ticketing system is not that fast, so be patient.
>

It's better than it was a few months ago I must say. It was almost
absolutely unusably slow the last time I was in there probably late last
year some time.

---
Landon Stewart <lstewart@superb.net <mailto"LStewart@Superb.Net>>
Sr. Administrator
Systems Engineering
Superb Internet Corp - 888-354-6128 x 4199
Web hosting and more "Ahead of the Rest": www.superb.net

On 2012-04-04 17:33:
>
> Hi,
>
> Actually knowing Chris, and his outfit, that 18k request seems unwarranted :(
>
> As for SORBS, they have a ticket system at http://support.sorbs.net/ which use the same username/password as https://www.us.sorbs.net. You can follow up there with your ticket #, if their robot is being a bit too fascist.
> ( ecarbonel was the guy that help us in our case )
>
> PS: The ticketing system is not that fast, so be patient.
>
> /wave Chris
>

Hi Alain!

The 18K thing was another operator, but we have not had much luck. I
will give my attention to the ticket for now and wait until something
happens. Its not a crucial issue since from what I can tell its mostly
a cosmetic thing (and a bit of a managerial pain to have to explain the
implications to a customer).

I have no beef with SORBS, we even rsync their zone on our DNS servers
so we can provide faster access to it to our customers that might use
it. However recently, getting listing action seems to fall into a void.

Cheers,

Chris

Some of the IP's I manage got blacklisted and its true they were spamming
and Sorbs had a very valid reason for blacklisting them.

I got this response response from sorbs after resolving the problem
amicably. Sorbs responded well on time.

*Your request appear to have been resolved. If you have any
further questions or concerns, please respond to this message.

Please note:

If your IP address has been delisted (marked as 'Inactive'), it will
take up to 2 hours to get from the database to all the SORBS DNS
servers. Changes to the database are exported to the DNS zone files
periodically, not immediately after every change. Furthermore, after
the updated database contents have been exported to the DNS zone
files, it will then take up to 48 hours for the outdated DNS
information to be removed from DNS caches around the world - none
of these are in SORBS' control.

Please do not reply to this call with problems not related to
this ticket or your request will be ignored.



*
*On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 10:53 PM, Chris Conn <cconn@b2b2c.ca> wrote:
*
>
> *Hello,
>
> Is anyone from SORBS still listening? We have a few IP addresses here
> and there that are listed, one in particular that has been for a spam
> incident from over a year ago. The "last spam" date is 03/05/2011
> according to their lookup tools.* *
>
> We don't have access to their Net Manager even if our ARIN POC corresponds
> to the account on their system we opened a while ago. We use their ISP
> feedback form and never get any responses back.* *
>
> Is SORBS still relevant and functional?* *
>
> Sincerely,*
>
> Chris Conn
> B2B2C.ca
>
>


--
Samson Oduor

Now, if we could only teach Senderbase that if their customers receive 'questionable' smtp traffic from 1 IP address in a /24 it doesn't mean that all IP addresses in that /24 are malicious we'd really be living it up in 2012.



-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Oduor [mailto:sam.oduor@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 7:56 AM
To: Chris Conn
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: SORBS?!

Some of the IP's I manage got blacklisted and its true they were spamming and Sorbs had a very valid reason for blacklisting them.

I got this response response from sorbs after resolving the problem amicably. Sorbs responded well on time.

*Your request appear to have been resolved. If you have any further questions or concerns, please respond to this message.

Please note:

If your IP address has been delisted (marked as 'Inactive'), it will take up to 2 hours to get from the database to all the SORBS DNS servers. Changes to the database are exported to the DNS zone files periodically, not immediately after every change. Furthermore, after the updated database contents have been exported to the DNS zone files, it will then take up to 48 hours for the outdated DNS information to be removed from DNS caches around the world - none of these are in SORBS' control.

Please do not reply to this call with problems not related to this ticket or your request will be ignored.



*
*On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 10:53 PM, Chris Conn <cconn@b2b2c.ca> wrote:
*
>
> *Hello,
>
> Is anyone from SORBS still listening? We have a few IP addresses here
> and there that are listed, one in particular that has been for a spam
> incident from over a year ago. The "last spam" date is 03/05/2011
> according to their lookup tools.* *
>
> We don't have access to their Net Manager even if our ARIN POC
> corresponds to the account on their system we opened a while ago. We
> use their ISP feedback form and never get any responses back.* *
>
> Is SORBS still relevant and functional?* *
>
> Sincerely,*
>
> Chris Conn
> B2B2C.ca
>
>


--
Samson Oduor

This is often the only way to get peoples attention and get action.


Providers dont care about individual /32's and will let them sit around
and spew nigerian scams and pill spams without any consequences.

But they will care about a /24.

-Dan

On Thu, 5 Apr 2012, Drew Weaver wrote:

> Now, if we could only teach Senderbase that if their customers receive 'questionable' smtp traffic from 1 IP address in a /24 it doesn't mean that all IP addresses in that /24 are malicious we'd really be living it up in 2012.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sam Oduor [mailto:sam.oduor@gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 7:56 AM
> To: Chris Conn
> Cc: nanog@nanog.org
> Subject: Re: SORBS?!
>
> Some of the IP's I manage got blacklisted and its true they were spamming and Sorbs had a very valid reason for blacklisting them.
>
> I got this response response from sorbs after resolving the problem amicably. Sorbs responded well on time.
>
> *Your request appear to have been resolved. If you have any further questions or concerns, please respond to this message.
>
> Please note:
>
> If your IP address has been delisted (marked as 'Inactive'), it will take up to 2 hours to get from the database to all the SORBS DNS servers. Changes to the database are exported to the DNS zone files periodically, not immediately after every change. Furthermore, after the updated database contents have been exported to the DNS zone files, it will then take up to 48 hours for the outdated DNS information to be removed from DNS caches around the world - none of these are in SORBS' control.
>
> Please do not reply to this call with problems not related to this ticket or your request will be ignored.
>
>
>
> *
> *On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 10:53 PM, Chris Conn <cconn@b2b2c.ca> wrote:
> *
>>
>> *Hello,
>>
>> Is anyone from SORBS still listening? We have a few IP addresses here
>> and there that are listed, one in particular that has been for a spam
>> incident from over a year ago. The "last spam" date is 03/05/2011
>> according to their lookup tools.* *
>>
>> We don't have access to their Net Manager even if our ARIN POC
>> corresponds to the account on their system we opened a while ago. We
>> use their ISP feedback form and never get any responses back.* *
>>
>> Is SORBS still relevant and functional?* *
>>
>> Sincerely,*
>>
>> Chris Conn
>> B2B2C.ca
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Samson Oduor
>
>

>
> On Thu, 5 Apr 2012, Drew Weaver wrote:
>
> Now, if we could only teach Senderbase that if their customers receive
>> 'questionable' smtp traffic from 1 IP address in a /24 it doesn't mean that
>> all IP addresses in that /24 are malicious we'd really be living it up in
>> 2012.
>>
>>
On 5 April 2012 09:48, <goemon@anime.net> wrote:

> This is often the only way to get peoples attention and get action.
>
> Providers dont care about individual /32's and will let them sit around
> and spew nigerian scams and pill spams without any consequences.
>
> But they will care about a /24.
>
> -Dan
>

If the purpose of blacklist is to block spam for recipients using that
blacklist then a /32 works. If the purpose of a blacklist is to annoy
providers then a /24 works. The most reputable and useful blacklists IMHO
are Spamhaus and Spamcop - they don't block /24s. Spamhaus sometimes does
if your rwhois shows that a large amount of the /24 is owned by the
offending party but generally they don't. In my opinion a blacklist is
useful when it notifies a provider of a listing, provides the reason for
the listing and gives you a way to remove the listing.

Spamhaus encourages companies to resolve all the issues while only blocking
/32s by showing all the listings under your responsibility and making nice
to see that list empty. Pretty simple. Incidentally SORBS usually blocks
/24s and, as far as I know, provides no way for you to lookup all listings
under a providers responsibility (by AS or otherwise).

Incidentally, I have yet to see anything from Proofpoint, SORBS or their
support system regarding the access issues we are having to their system.
If anyone has another contact at Proofpoint other than Girish I'd
appreciate knowing what it is.

---
Landon Stewart <lstewart@superb.net <mailto"LStewart@Superb.Net>>
Sr. Administrator
Systems Engineering
Superb Internet Corp - 888-354-6128 x 4199
Web hosting and more "Ahead of the Rest": www.superb.net

On 05/04/2012 17:48, goemon@anime.net wrote:
> But they will care about a /24.

I'm curious as to why they would want to stop at /24. If you're going to
take the shotgun approach, why not blacklist the entire ASN?

Nick

That's probably a better idea.

I moved "into" a /24 ip block that was SWIPed to me that they reported was
"dynamic cable/DSL users" (no spam history, mind you). Didn't matter, I
couldn't send e-mail.

When trying to get it delisted I had a TTL on the zone that was
"incompatible" with their standards (for DR failover purposes) and was
unwilling to maintain a TTL of how many ever hours they wanted as it didn't
fit the company's requirements.

I ended up just getting a new IP block from the ISP as they gave up on
resolving it too. Kind of a waste, but it worked. I relocated to there
instead.

1 year later they updated my ticket and delisted it.



On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 11:45 AM, Nick Hilliard <nick@foobar.org> wrote:

> On 05/04/2012 17:48, goemon@anime.net wrote:
> > But they will care about a /24.
>
> I'm curious as to why they would want to stop at /24. If you're going to
> take the shotgun approach, why not blacklist the entire ASN?
>
> Nick
>
>

That's just not true, we would much rather be notified of something that a reputation list finds objectionable and take it down ourselves than have Senderbase set a poor reputation on dozens of IaaS customers.

-Drew

-----Original Message-----
From: goemon@anime.net [mailto:goemon@anime.net]
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 12:48 PM
To: Drew Weaver
Cc: 'Sam Oduor'; Chris Conn; nanog@nanog.org
Subject: RE: SORBS?!

This is often the only way to get peoples attention and get action.


Providers dont care about individual /32's and will let them sit around and spew nigerian scams and pill spams without any consequences.

But they will care about a /24.

-Dan

On Thu, 5 Apr 2012, Drew Weaver wrote:

> Now, if we could only teach Senderbase that if their customers receive 'questionable' smtp traffic from 1 IP address in a /24 it doesn't mean that all IP addresses in that /24 are malicious we'd really be living it up in 2012.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sam Oduor [mailto:sam.oduor@gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 7:56 AM
> To: Chris Conn
> Cc: nanog@nanog.org
> Subject: Re: SORBS?!
>
> Some of the IP's I manage got blacklisted and its true they were spamming and Sorbs had a very valid reason for blacklisting them.
>
> I got this response response from sorbs after resolving the problem amicably. Sorbs responded well on time.
>
> *Your request appear to have been resolved. If you have any further questions or concerns, please respond to this message.
>
> Please note:
>
> If your IP address has been delisted (marked as 'Inactive'), it will take up to 2 hours to get from the database to all the SORBS DNS servers. Changes to the database are exported to the DNS zone files periodically, not immediately after every change. Furthermore, after the updated database contents have been exported to the DNS zone files, it will then take up to 48 hours for the outdated DNS information to be removed from DNS caches around the world - none of these are in SORBS' control.
>
> Please do not reply to this call with problems not related to this ticket or your request will be ignored.
>
>
>
> *
> *On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 10:53 PM, Chris Conn <cconn@b2b2c.ca> wrote:
> *
>>
>> *Hello,
>>
>> Is anyone from SORBS still listening? We have a few IP addresses here
>> and there that are listed, one in particular that has been for a spam
>> incident from over a year ago. The "last spam" date is 03/05/2011
>> according to their lookup tools.* *
>>
>> We don't have access to their Net Manager even if our ARIN POC
>> corresponds to the account on their system we opened a while ago. We
>> use their ISP feedback form and never get any responses back.* *
>>
>> Is SORBS still relevant and functional?* *
>>
>> Sincerely,*
>>
>> Chris Conn
>> B2B2C.ca
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Samson Oduor
>
>

On Fri, 06 Apr 2012 07:31:47 -0400, Drew Weaver said:
> That's just not true, we would much rather be notified of something that a
> reputation list finds objectionable and take it down ourselves than have
> Senderbase set a poor reputation on dozens of IaaS customers.

If it was industry-wide standard practice that just notifying a provider resulted
in something being done, we'd not need things like Senderbase, which is after
all basically a list of people who don't take action when notified...

That is again, not true.

Senderbase's listings don't correlate to any public information so it's pretty much impossible to pro-actively protect ourselves from having our IPs set to poor.

I.e. when Senderbase assigns IPs to poor, those same IPs aren't listed on any RBLs or anything.

They operate in a vacuum where there is no visibility into why they do anything. Unlike organizations like Spamhaus where you know exactly why IPs are listed.

Thanks,
-Drew



-----Original Message-----
From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu [mailto:Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu]
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2012 9:48 AM
To: Drew Weaver
Cc: 'goemon@anime.net'; nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: SORBS?!

On Fri, 06 Apr 2012 07:31:47 -0400, Drew Weaver said:
> That's just not true, we would much rather be notified of something
> that a reputation list finds objectionable and take it down ourselves
> than have Senderbase set a poor reputation on dozens of IaaS customers.

If it was industry-wide standard practice that just notifying a provider resulted in something being done, we'd not need things like Senderbase, which is after all basically a list of people who don't take action when notified...

On 4/4/12 3:36 PM, Landon Stewart wrote:

>> > It's best to not complain about it and just accept it as a fact of life
>> > your IPs are listed on SORBS and move on. It's not the end of the world.
>> >
> It turns into a customer service issue for most service providers.

Eh, guess they'll just have to absorb the cost of that, like its
expected that the recipients of spam have to absorb the cost of ISPs not
disconnecting infected/spamming customers...

And like how I have to absorb the costs of spending my time during the
day answering removal requests from people who lie to me constantly and
hope that I don't notice their little games.

Ever wonder why it takes time for DNSbl's to process removals, sometimes
very long periods? Well, someone's gotta pay for that time the removal
person does it (and I have yet to see a dime of compensation for the
time I spend).



--
Brielle Bruns
The Summit Open Source Development Group
http://www.sosdg.org / http://www.ahbl.org

On Apr 6, 2012, at 10:54 , Brielle Bruns wrote:
> On 4/4/12 3:36 PM, Landon Stewart wrote:
>
>>>> It's best to not complain about it and just accept it as a fact of life
>>>> your IPs are listed on SORBS and move on. It's not the end of the world.
>>>>
>> It turns into a customer service issue for most service providers.
>
> Eh, guess they'll just have to absorb the cost of that, like its expected that the recipients of spam have to absorb the cost of ISPs not disconnecting infected/spamming customers...
>
> And like how I have to absorb the costs of spending my time during the day answering removal requests from people who lie to me constantly and hope that I don't notice their little games.
>
> Ever wonder why it takes time for DNSbl's to process removals, sometimes very long periods? Well, someone's gotta pay for that time the removal person does it (and I have yet to see a dime of compensation for the time I spend).

No, they don't. Many DNSBLs use self-service tools. Someone has to write the tool, but the rest is automated. Total cost is power & space, which is frequently donated (I have personally donated some myself to DNSBLs I thought were well run).

Besides, anyone who knowingly causes harm to a third party and claims "it is a cost of doing business" or "mostly people like it" or "our $FOO is targeted and almost always correct, you must be an outlier and that's why it costs you" sound -exactly- like spammers to me.

Spammer who are up-front about it I can deal with. Don't agree with or even like them, but at least we understand each other. Hypocrisy is a different story.

--
TTFN,
patrick

On Apr 6, 2012, at 10:54 , Brielle Bruns wrote:
> On 4/4/12 3:36 PM, Landon Stewart wrote:
>
>>>> It's best to not complain about it and just accept it as a fact of life
>>>> your IPs are listed on SORBS and move on. It's not the end of the world.
>>>>
>> It turns into a customer service issue for most service providers.
>
> Eh, guess they'll just have to absorb the cost of that, like its expected that the recipients of spam have to absorb the cost of ISPs not disconnecting infected/spamming customers...
>
> And like how I have to absorb the costs of spending my time during the day answering removal requests from people who lie to me constantly and hope that I don't notice their little games.
>
> Ever wonder why it takes time for DNSbl's to process removals, sometimes very long periods? Well, someone's gotta pay for that time the removal person does it (and I have yet to see a dime of compensation for the time I spend).

No, they don't. Many DNSBLs use self-service tools. Someone has to write the tool, but the rest is automated. Total cost is power & space, which is frequently donated (I have personally donated some myself to DNSBLs I thought were well run).

Besides, anyone who knowingly causes harm to a third party and claims "it is a cost of doing business" or "mostly people like it" or "our $FOO is targeted and almost always correct, you must be an outlier and that's why it costs you" sound -exactly- like spammers to me.

Spammer who are up-front about it I can deal with. Don't agree with or even like them, but at least we understand each other. Hypocrisy is a different story.

--
TTFN,
patrick

On 4/6/12 9:02 AM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> No, they don't. Many DNSBLs use self-service tools. Someone has to
> write the tool, but the rest is automated. Total cost is power&
> space, which is frequently donated (I have personally donated some
> myself to DNSBLs I thought were well run).


Proxy removals and automated additions are self service removals. I
don't trust automated removal for stuff that we add by hand. Too many
variables, too much in the way of games...

If I were to let the people in spam-sources request removal and handle
removal entirely on their own without one of us reviewing it by hand,
there'd be no entries left in my database.

>
> Besides, anyone who knowingly causes harm to a third party and claims
> "it is a cost of doing business" or "mostly people like it" or "our
> $FOO is targeted and almost always correct, you must be an outlier
> and that's why it costs you" sound -exactly- like spammers to me.


I was more pointing out to people that you expect someone else, who
you've got no contractual obligation with, or relationship with, to make
time and effort to handle a request you made.

All I hear these days from people is that I have no right to tell them
who they can have as customers, or how to run their business.

Well, the reverse applies as well. I take great offense to people
telling me how to run my own service, that I provide free at no charge
with no obligations.

When a provider actually works with me to resolve an issue, I bend over
backwards to help them. Unfortunately, those kinds of providers are few
and far in between.

>
> Spammer who are up-front about it I can deal with. Don't agree with
> or even like them, but at least we understand each other. Hypocrisy
> is a different story.


Unfortunately, the apathy of providers, backbones, and network operators
in general have created an environment that the almighty buck rules
everything.

Yeah, I've had offers for financial support of the AHBL. Turned them
down every time, even though it would give me a chance to hire actual
people to run it. But, then, I'd have someone hanging over my
shoulder, pulling strings and interfering with my project. My
independence goes out the window, and I can't truly say I have no
financial interest in the listings.


So, forgive me if my independence as a non-commercial DNSbl makes me
somewhat jaded towards people who expect me to prioritize their demands
over what pays the bills.

--
Brielle Bruns
The Summit Open Source Development Group
http://www.sosdg.org / http://www.ahbl.org

This seems like a very 1999 anti-spam attitude.

I have been doing anti-spam a long long time - literally since before Canter and Siegel (who I had as customers...) and before jj@cup.portal.com.

It's not 1999 anymore. Patrick is not the enemy. Your attitude is worrying. The "I am not responsible for who uses the blacklist or what that means" isn't good enough anymore.


George William Herbert
Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 6, 2012, at 8:37, Brielle Bruns <bruns@2mbit.com> wrote:

> On 4/6/12 9:02 AM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
>> No, they don't. Many DNSBLs use self-service tools. Someone has to
>> write the tool, but the rest is automated. Total cost is power&
>> space, which is frequently donated (I have personally donated some
>> myself to DNSBLs I thought were well run).
>
>
> Proxy removals and automated additions are self service removals. I don't trust automated removal for stuff that we add by hand. Too many variables, too much in the way of games...
>
> If I were to let the people in spam-sources request removal and handle removal entirely on their own without one of us reviewing it by hand, there'd be no entries left in my database.
>
>>
>> Besides, anyone who knowingly causes harm to a third party and claims
>> "it is a cost of doing business" or "mostly people like it" or "our
>> $FOO is targeted and almost always correct, you must be an outlier
>> and that's why it costs you" sound -exactly- like spammers to me.
>
>
> I was more pointing out to people that you expect someone else, who you've got no contractual obligation with, or relationship with, to make time and effort to handle a request you made.
>
> All I hear these days from people is that I have no right to tell them who they can have as customers, or how to run their business.
>
> Well, the reverse applies as well. I take great offense to people telling me how to run my own service, that I provide free at no charge with no obligations.
>
> When a provider actually works with me to resolve an issue, I bend over backwards to help them. Unfortunately, those kinds of providers are few and far in between.
>
>>
>> Spammer who are up-front about it I can deal with. Don't agree with
>> or even like them, but at least we understand each other. Hypocrisy
>> is a different story.
>
>
> Unfortunately, the apathy of providers, backbones, and network operators in general have created an environment that the almighty buck rules everything.
>
> Yeah, I've had offers for financial support of the AHBL. Turned them down every time, even though it would give me a chance to hire actual people to run it. But, then, I'd have someone hanging over my shoulder, pulling strings and interfering with my project. My independence goes out the window, and I can't truly say I have no financial interest in the listings.
>
>
> So, forgive me if my independence as a non-commercial DNSbl makes me somewhat jaded towards people who expect me to prioritize their demands over what pays the bills.
>
> --
> Brielle Bruns
> The Summit Open Source Development Group
> http://www.sosdg.org / http://www.ahbl.org
>

On 04/06/2012 08:49 AM, George Herbert wrote:
> This seems like a very 1999 anti-spam attitude.
>
> I have been doing anti-spam a long long time - literally since before Canter and Siegel (who I had as customers...) and before jj@cup.portal.com.
>
> It's not 1999 anymore. Patrick is not the enemy. Your attitude is worrying. The "I am not responsible for who uses the blacklist or what that means" isn't good enough anymore.

I wonder how long a popularish blacklist operator would last if they,
oh say, blacklisted all of google or microsoft before they got some
very threatening letters from their legal staff. An hour? A day? A week?

You may have the right to list them and change your mind in your own
good time, but they also have the right to defend their reputation civilly
too. With great power comes great responsibility and all that.

Mike

On 4/6/12 9:49 AM, George Herbert wrote:
> This seems like a very 1999 anti-spam attitude.
>
> I have been doing anti-spam a long long time - literally since before
> Canter and Siegel (who I had as customers...) and
> beforejj@cup.portal.com.
>
> It's not 1999 anymore. Patrick is not the enemy. Your attitude is
> worrying. The "I am not responsible for who uses the blacklist or
> what that means" isn't good enough anymore.


I know he's not the enemy. Hate the idea that he would be.

The only reason why I responded the way I did, was because I sit here,
watching everyone talk about how SORBS is bad this, how they are bad
that, how they need to change this, and how they need to change how they
operate to their guidelines, not SORBS's guidelines.

Its not directed at Patrick. I just got the feeling like he was saying
its okay for these people to dictate how SORBS operates.

Like its been said, DNSbl's have a right to run as they see fit, and
handle removals as they see fit. Just like every ISP has the right to
run their network as they see fit, and refuse to remove spamming
customers and deal with network abuse.

I've been working on variations of the AHBL since 1998 or so under
different names, so if I seem 'old school' in my beliefs how the DNSbl
is run, that's probably why.

Reality is, people use a DNSbl how they see fit. I can't really control
that without restricting access, requiring payments or registration,
etc. I gave up years ago trying to tell people how not to use it, since
noone actually listens.



--
Brielle Bruns
The Summit Open Source Development Group
http://www.sosdg.org / http://www.ahbl.org

On 4/6/12 10:02 AM, Michael Thomas wrote:
>
> I wonder how long a popularish blacklist operator would last if they,
> oh say, blacklisted all of google or microsoft before they got some
> very threatening letters from their legal staff. An hour? A day? A week?
>
> You may have the right to list them and change your mind in your own
> good time, but they also have the right to defend their reputation civilly
> too. With great power comes great responsibility and all that.

Slippery slope.

For large providers who depend alot on spam filters, thats one huge door
to open that could get very ugly very quick in the reverse path.
Imagine every ISP suing hotmail and google for blocking messages for
arbitrary reasons with no apparent justification.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

There's also USC 47,230 to contend with.




--
Brielle Bruns
The Summit Open Source Development Group
http://www.sosdg.org / http://www.ahbl.org

On Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:55:35 -0400, Drew Weaver said:
> That is again, not true.
>
> Senderbase's listings don't correlate to any public information so it's pretty
> much impossible to pro-actively protect ourselves from having our IPs set to poor.

You missed the point - if it was industry standard practice, reputation lists
at Senderbase, Spamhaus, and SORBS would *all 3* be out of business, because
the average spammer's lifespan at a provider would be less than the time it
takes the average reputation list to put up an entry.

On 04/06/2012 09:17 AM, Brielle Bruns wrote:
> On 4/6/12 10:02 AM, Michael Thomas wrote:
>>
>> I wonder how long a popularish blacklist operator would last if they,
>> oh say, blacklisted all of google or microsoft before they got some
>> very threatening letters from their legal staff. An hour? A day? A week?
>>
>> You may have the right to list them and change your mind in your own
>> good time, but they also have the right to defend their reputation civilly
>> too. With great power comes great responsibility and all that.
>
> Slippery slope.
>
> For large providers who depend alot on spam filters, thats one huge door to open that could get very ugly very quick in the reverse path. Imagine every ISP suing hotmail and google for blocking messages for arbitrary reasons with no apparent justification.
>
> What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
>
> There's also USC 47,230 to contend with.
>

It's more of an arms race than a slippery slope, but my point is that a
big enough company would absolutely respond if they felt a big enough
blacklist was being capricious in a way that was affecting their making
money.

I sympathize with "my blacklist, my donated time, my rules", but when
you're affecting their business, you better get it right and better respond
reasonably when the inevitable screwups happen. The one absolute right you
have is to not be in the blacklist business (paid or not) at all. Beyond that,
you have responsibilities too, and it would be best for everybody to not
take them lightly causing the entire thing to get escalated to the legal
domain where everybody most likely loses.

Mike

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 7:31 AM, Drew Weaver <drew.weaver@thenap.com> wrote:
> That's just not true, we would much rather be notified of
>something that a reputation list finds objectionable and take
>it down ourselves than have Senderbase set a poor
>reputation on dozens of IaaS customers.

I think the idea is that you're supposed to proactively monitor your
systems for abuse and generally make your network inhospitable to
spammers, not just reactively move the customer to a new IP address
when the unpaid anti-spammers kindly let you know you've been
detected.

Personally I see SORBS as the canary in the coal mine. Except for the
DUHL (which identifies dynamic IPs, not spamming activity) nobody
serious relies on SORBS' data. So, it doesn't much hurt when they list
you. But, like the canary that dies first if the air turns bad, if
you're careful to watch SORBS you know when you're headed for problems
which will get you listed by a real RBL.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



--
William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com  bill@herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

So you're suggesting that hosting companies do what?

How many emails or port 25/587 connections a (day, week, hour) makes someone a spammer if there are no objections being lodged at the abuse department?

Are we supposed to do DPI on every email that a dedicated server sends out and then decide whether it's spam?

My point is if a list has a problem with a /32 they could have the courtesy to contact the ISP/host prior to causing huge problems for a /24

I'm not sure what more can be done than having an abuse department staffed up and checking all published data before accepting a customer.

And I'm mostly just complaining about senderbase, because they seem to be the one that really large companies reference.

Thanks,
-Drew


-----Original Message-----
From: wherrin@gmail.com [mailto:wherrin@gmail.com] On Behalf Of William Herrin
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2012 12:56 PM
To: Drew Weaver
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: SORBS?!

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 7:31 AM, Drew Weaver <drew.weaver@thenap.com> wrote:
> That's just not true, we would much rather be notified of something
>that a reputation list finds objectionable and take it down ourselves
>than have Senderbase set a poor reputation on dozens of IaaS customers.

I think the idea is that you're supposed to proactively monitor your systems for abuse and generally make your network inhospitable to spammers, not just reactively move the customer to a new IP address when the unpaid anti-spammers kindly let you know you've been detected.

Personally I see SORBS as the canary in the coal mine. Except for the DUHL (which identifies dynamic IPs, not spamming activity) nobody serious relies on SORBS' data. So, it doesn't much hurt when they list you. But, like the canary that dies first if the air turns bad, if you're careful to watch SORBS you know when you're headed for problems which will get you listed by a real RBL.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



--
William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com  bill@herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

On 4/6/2012 12:35 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:
> On 04/06/2012 09:17 AM, Brielle Bruns wrote:
>> On 4/6/12 10:02 AM, Michael Thomas wrote:
>>>
>>> I wonder how long a popularish blacklist operator would last if they,
>>> oh say, blacklisted all of google or microsoft before they got some
>>> very threatening letters from their legal staff. An hour? A day? A
>>> week?
>>>
>>> You may have the right to list them and change your mind in your own
>>> good time, but they also have the right to defend their reputation
>>> civilly
>>> too. With great power comes great responsibility and all that.
>>
>> Slippery slope.
>>
>> For large providers who depend alot on spam filters, thats one huge
>> door to open that could get very ugly very quick in the reverse path.
>> Imagine every ISP suing hotmail and google for blocking messages for
>> arbitrary reasons with no apparent justification.
>>
>> What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
>>
>> There's also USC 47,230 to contend with.
>>
>
> It's more of an arms race than a slippery slope, but my point is that a
> big enough company would absolutely respond if they felt a big enough
> blacklist was being capricious in a way that was affecting their making
> money.
>
> I sympathize with "my blacklist, my donated time, my rules", but when
> you're affecting their business, you better get it right and better
> respond
> reasonably when the inevitable screwups happen. The one absolute right
> you
> have is to not be in the blacklist business (paid or not) at all.
> Beyond that,
> you have responsibilities too, and it would be best for everybody to not
> take them lightly causing the entire thing to get escalated to the legal
> domain where everybody most likely loses.

What grounds would these large senders have to file any legal objections
against an RBL?

RBLs don't block emails. Operators of mail servers who use RBLs block
emails (in part) based on information from RBLs.

Noone has a "right" to send email to anyone else. Email is a
cooperative agreement between sender and receiver. The receiver agrees
to accept the email, but at any time and for any reason the receiver can
stop agreeing to accept emails from a sender. It is completely legal to
decide not to accept (i.e. block) emails from a sender.

RBLs are not beholden to senders. RBLs are beholden to the receivers
who use their RBL to preserve the quality of the RBL. RBLs are a
meritocracy. If an RBL either lists too many valid senders or does not
list enough bad senders, then receivers will notice and stop using the
RBL on their servers.

-DMM

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 8:48 AM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
> If it was industry-wide standard practice that just notifying a provider resulted
> in something being done, we'd not need things like Senderbase, which is after
> all basically a list of people who don't take action when notified...
>
[snip]
Pot calling the kettle black. Before we talk about industry-wide
practice about the providers "doing something". We should talk about
industry-wide practice for "Black lists" doing something to correct
entries, instead of just building up indiscriminate or irresponsibly
maintained lists of networks or "scores" of networks that were
targetted by a spammer at one time in the past.

It's just as bad for a blacklist operator to not respond and "do
something" for a network operator legitimately trying to resolve spam
problems with their network and clear the listing as it is for a
network abuse contact to not respond to a network operator.

We should talk about industry-wide practices for how providers should
be notified,
what providers are actually supposed to do to "authenticate reports", because
sometimes the report/notification itself is malicious or false
abusive attempt to
harass an innocent email user, and what exactly providers are
actually expected
to do with certain kinds of notification.

The informal standard of "just call or send an e-mail to an abuse
contact" is poorly
specified. The informal standard of "the abuse contact should
investigate and take
immediate action" is poorly specified.


Some of these things that are not specified by RFC should be specified
by RFC as best practice.
There should be abuse notification and response notification
mechanisms other than free form e-mail.

--
-JH

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Drew Weaver <drew.weaver@thenap.com> wrote:
> So you're suggesting that hosting companies do what?

I believe I'm suggesting you use SORBS as your canary in the coal mine
and otherwise ignore them.

But if you're asking what hosting companies could do to proactively
prevent spamming and make their systems inhospitable to spammers, I
might start with blocking non-local outbound TCP 25 by default. Then
have the customer fill out and sign a form. Spell out your bulk email
policies, have the customer specify which of their IPs will originate
email and have them send the form to you signed via U.S. Mail. No
"proof" or other major hoops, just sign and mail the form.

Unless you're *trying* to run a "bulletproof hosting" system, you'll
find the customers who intentionally spam would prefer to stay under
the radar. Forcing them to "out" themselves by telling you they intend
to send mail from every one of their addresses is often enough to
encourage their voluntary departure. And it's certainly enough to tell
you *which* among your thousands of customers you should watch to make
sure they're not spammers.

For the non-spamming customers, you've emphasized that running a well
secured email server is a challenge which takes more than clicking
install.exe. You haven't told them they can't, but you've spelled out
"be careful" in big, bold letters.


> And I'm mostly just complaining about senderbase, because they seem to be the one that really large companies reference.

Meh. If you catch them while they're still just annoying SORBS,
they'll never make it in to senderbase. Canary. Coal mine.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



--
William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com  bill@herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

On Fri, 6 Apr 2012, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

>> Ever wonder why it takes time for DNSbl's to process removals,
>> sometimes very long periods? Well, someone's gotta pay for that time
>> the removal person does it (and I have yet to see a dime of
>> compensation for the time I spend).
>
> No, they don't. Many DNSBLs use self-service tools. Someone has to
> write the tool, but the rest is automated. Total cost is power & space,
> which is frequently donated (I have personally donated some myself to
> DNSBLs I thought were well run).

This depends on the DNSBL, the type of listing, and that DNSBL's policies.
Some DNSBLs, some listings, automated removal is possible and appropriate.
Sometimes it's not, and a human is needed to make the decision as to
whether a delisting request should be granted or refused.

Even when there is a path for automated removals via a web form, not
everyone will find or use that path.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Lewis, MCP :) | I route
Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are
Atlantic Net |
_________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________

On Thu, 5 Apr 2012, Landon Stewart wrote:

> If the purpose of blacklist is to block spam for recipients using that
> blacklist then a /32 works. If the purpose of a blacklist is to annoy
> providers then a /24 works. The most reputable and useful blacklists IMHO
> are Spamhaus and Spamcop - they don't block /24s. Spamhaus sometimes does
> if your rwhois shows that a large amount of the /24 is owned by the
> offending party but generally they don't.

Spamhaus may not default to doing /24 listings for a /32 spam emitter, but
they certainly do list /24s or shorter subnets when they feel it's
appropriate. They even do "escalations" to corporate mail servers on rare
occasions when a provider appears to be complicit with spammers and
ignoring their SBLs.

The purpose thing is an interesting question though. Is the purpose of
DNSBLs simply to help admins avoid accepting spam from spammers or to
attempt to prevent spammers from operating on the internet? For most of
the DNSBLs I'm familiar with, I'd say they're trying to do both.

> Spamhaus encourages companies to resolve all the issues while only
> blocking /32s by showing all the listings under your responsibility and
> making nice to see that list empty. Pretty simple. Incidentally SORBS
> usually blocks /24s and, as far as I know, provides no way for you to
> lookup all listings under a providers responsibility (by AS or
> otherwise).

That's really either not true or an oversimplification. Spamhaus blocks
shorter than /32 pretty frequently. You could maybe argue that Spamhaus
works harder to avoid innocent collateral damage. Having not used SORBS
for many years, I couldn't say if that's true or not. The vast majority
of my recent years interactions with SORBS have been trying to get
inappropriately listed IPs removed from their DUHL.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Lewis, MCP :) | I route
Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are
Atlantic Net |
_________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________

On Thu, Apr 05, 2012 at 06:45:30PM +0100, Nick Hilliard wrote:
> On 05/04/2012 17:48, goemon@anime.net wrote:
> > But they will care about a /24.
>
> I'm curious as to why they would want to stop at /24. If you're going to
> take the shotgun approach, why not blacklist the entire ASN?

It's a balancing act. Too little collateral damage and the provider
hosting the spammer isn't motivated to act. Too much collateral
damage, and no one uses your blacklist because using it generates too
many user complaints, and then your list doesn't motivate anyone to do
anything because there's no real downside to being on the list. Just
the right amount of collateral damage, and your list gets widely used,
and causes enough pain on the other of the /24 that they clean things
up.

I'm not arguing for or against any particular amount of collateral
damage. Just commenting on the effects of varying amounts of
collateral damage.

-- Brett

Jimmy Hess wrote:
>
> On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 8:48 AM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
> > If it was industry-wide standard practice that just notifying a provider
> > resulted in something being done, we'd not need things like Senderbase,
> > which is after all basically a list of people who don't take action
> > when notified...
> >
> [snip]
> Pot calling the kettle black. Before we talk about industry-wide
> practice about the providers "doing something". We should talk about
> industry-wide practice for "Black lists" doing something to correct
> entries, instead of just building up indiscriminate or irresponsibly
> maintained lists of networks or "scores" of networks that were
> targetted by a spammer at one time in the past.

Sorry, but blocklists _came_into_existance_ ONLY because of large numbers
of providers *ignoring* the problems their networks were causing the
rest of the world.

The very existance of 'widely used' blocklists is a damning indictment of
the entire services provider industry. _Everybody_, including the major
blocklist operators, would prefer that blocklists were _not_ needed -- that
all providers would simply 'do the right thing', and insure that their users
did =not= abuse other people's systems.

Were that pipe-dream to come to pass, the major blocklists would *happily*
shut down. They are all 'money sinks', operating at a loss, 'for the good
of the community as a whole'.

Before blocklists. 'policing your own network' was a pure expense item
with no return. _Not_ policing one's own users *added* to profitability.
There was no 'business incentive' to be a "good neighbor".

With the advent of blocklists, providers have an 'economic self interest'
justification in remaining out of the major/widely used ones. It is still
an expense item, but "not doing anything" costs _more_ in 'lost revenues'.

It is a sad comment on the state of affairs that _all_ the major providers
have repeatedly demonstrated they simply "cannot be trusted to 'do the right
thing'" *without* a loaded gun held to their heads -- but that *is* the
reality of today's marketplace.

Today, for any of the major spam-based blocklists, a single entry consisting
of more than a single address is indiicative of a _failure_ of a provider's
self-policing. It is the height of hubris for a provider to 'demand' (or
even 'expect') prompt/immediate response from a blocklist, *when* the
provider 'demonstrably' couldn't be bothered to act that way themselves.
(What's 'sauce for the goose' _is_ sauce for the gander. :) IF the provider
had been actively self-policing, the blocklist entry would not have been
escalalated to larger than the single offending address.

Yes, it would be "nice" if everybody responded promptly; but, in the real
world, that simply doesn't happen -- on either side of the fence. I
once got an ack about a spam complaint *over*five*months* after sending it.
(For 'some strange reason', that provider is no longer in business. Thank
goodness!

> It's just as bad for a blacklist operator to not respond and "do
> something" for a network operator legitimately trying to resolve spam
> problems with their network and clear the listing as it is for a
> network abuse contact to not respond to a network operator.

This is provably not true.

There is no recourse/remedy for an unresponsive network operator. The
'network abuse' ccontinues to flow, _unabated_, from that network.

A blocklist, on the other hand, tends to be self-regulating. If it is
not responsive to changing conitions, especially the 'cleaning' of formerly
'bad reputation' addresses/blocks, it generates an 'unacceptably high'
number -- as determined by it's USERS, not the senders -- of 'false positive'
evaluations, *wherepon* increasing numbers of users =stop= using that
service. Resulting in an automatic _lessening_ of the impact of being
listed on that blocklist.

See the APEWS list for a 'textbook' demonstration of this self-regulation
in action.

> We should talk about industry-wide practices for how providers should
> be notified, what providers are actually supposed to do to "authenticate
> reports", because > sometimes the report/notification itself is
> malicious or false abusive attempt to harass an innocent email user,
> and what exactly providers are actually expected to do with certain kinds
> of notification.
>
> The informal standard of "just call or send an e-mail to an abuse
> contact" is poorly specified. The informal standard of "the abuse
> contact should investigate and take immediate action" is poorly
> specified.
>
> Some of these things that are not specified by RFC should be specified
> by RFC as best practice. There should be abuse notification and response
> notification mechanisms other than free form e-mail.

It would appear that you are not familiar with RFC 5965.

Brielle Bruns wrote:
> Unfortunately, the apathy of providers, backbones, and network operators
> in general have created an environment that the almighty buck rules
> everything.

I totally agree with pretty much everything in this email.

I also agree that blocking whole /24 or bigger when spam has been
detected to come from such a block is more often than not a necessity.
It's very unlikely to see 1 abuser in between an otherwise perfectly
behaving network neighbourhood.

Greetings,
Jeroen


--
Earthquake Magnitude: 5.5
Date: Friday, April 6, 2012 19:24:11 UTC
Location: Kepulauan Mentawai region, Indonesia
Latitude: -3.3944; Longitude: 100.4205
Depth: 1.00 km

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 8:13 PM, Jeroen van Aart <jeroen@mompl.net> wrote:
> Brielle Bruns wrote:
> to come from such a block is more often than not a necessity. It's very
> unlikely to see 1 abuser in between an otherwise perfectly behaving network
> neighbourhood.

That's kind of vague to say it's "unlikely to see 1 abuser". What is
the probability that
more IPs in the same /24 are likely to harbor abusers, given that you have
received abuse from one IP?

And how have you discovered this?
( What is the criteria used to determine that it is unlikely, and what
is your source of the information?)

Are you assuming that if you've seen the abuse, that you probably
weren't the first victim,
that the ISP has probably already been notified by someone else,
that they have likely had a
reasonable amount of time to put a stop to the abuse, and that they
failed to do so?


There is the one good case where a single abuser has a dynamic IP address;
but it's not a safe assumption that they will live in the same /24
next time the abuser dials in.

So not only does listing an entire /24 list innocent users' IP addresses,
it also does not necessarily effectively list the one abuser.

--
-JH

i dont think anyone would miss sorbs if it was gone, dare i say it not even
a single person

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 9:48 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 8:13 PM, Jeroen van Aart <jeroen@mompl.net> wrote:
> > Brielle Bruns wrote:
> > to come from such a block is more often than not a necessity. It's very
> > unlikely to see 1 abuser in between an otherwise perfectly behaving
> network
> > neighbourhood.
>
> That's kind of vague to say it's "unlikely to see 1 abuser". What is
> the probability that
> more IPs in the same /24 are likely to harbor abusers, given that you
> have
> received abuse from one IP?
>
> And how have you discovered this?
> ( What is the criteria used to determine that it is unlikely, and what
> is your source of the information?)
>
> Are you assuming that if you've seen the abuse, that you probably
> weren't the first victim,
> that the ISP has probably already been notified by someone else,
> that they have likely had a
> reasonable amount of time to put a stop to the abuse, and that they
> failed to do so?
>
>
> There is the one good case where a single abuser has a dynamic IP address;
> but it's not a safe assumption that they will live in the same /24
> next time the abuser dials in.
>
> So not only does listing an entire /24 list innocent users' IP
> addresses,
> it also does not necessarily effectively list the one abuser.
>
> --
> -JH
>
>

On Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:48:44 -0500, Jimmy Hess said:

> That's kind of vague to say it's "unlikely to see 1 abuser". What is
> the probability that
> more IPs in the same /24 are likely to harbor abusers, given that you have
> received abuse from one IP?

It's similar to pirhanas or cockroaches - they can't be found everywhere, but
if you spot one in a location, there's a near certainty that there's plent more
in the area.

Or if you don't like that, you can run a simple Monte Carlo simulation. Assume
256 customer slots, and that initially, there is a 3% chance that the next
customer to arrive is evil. Also add a feedback - each time you terminate an
evil customer in less than the average arrival time, the chance the next
customer is evil is cut by 10% of the current value. Each time an evil
customer is allowed to last 3 times the average arrival time, the chance of an
evil customer goes up 10%. Simulate for various termination times for
evil customers.

Are there any steady-state solutions where the *average* number of evil
users is one? Or does it decay down towards zero or upwards towards
a high number?

On 07/04/12 05:11, David Miller wrote:
>
>
> RBLs don't block emails. Operators of mail servers who use RBLs block
> emails (in part) based on information from RBLs.

If only one could convince end-users of this fact. More often than not,
end-user simply sees the company that they pay to provide them with
email service, unable to provide it.

>
> Noone has a "right" to send email to anyone else. Email is a
> cooperative agreement between sender and receiver. The receiver agrees
> to accept the email, but at any time and for any reason the receiver can
> stop agreeing to accept emails from a sender. It is completely legal to
> decide not to accept (i.e. block) emails from a sender.

Absolutely true. Of course, for the vast majority of end-users, they're
simply expecting to be able to exchange email with anyone that has an
email address. There's no connection between the end user, their local
mail service providers administrators, and the decisions they make about
who they'll exchange email with. Nevermind trying to make connections
between mail service providers...

>
> RBLs are not beholden to senders. RBLs are beholden to the receivers
> who use their RBL to preserve the quality of the RBL. RBLs are a
> meritocracy. If an RBL either lists too many valid senders or does not
> list enough bad senders, then receivers will notice and stop using the
> RBL on their servers.
>
Or receivers will be oblivious, and simply not care. (They don't know
what they're not receiving).

Consider an MSP with say, 1 Million mailboxes.
What proportion of those customers are going to need to be affected by a
poor RBL-based decision,
and what proportion of those are going to be motivated to complain,
and what proportion of those are going to get the attention of the right
people,
and what proportion of those will count for enough that the relevant
beancounters see fit to change their RBL usage?

Whilst i'm sure there's some players out there bucking the trend, the
reality is that the senders MSP wind up carrying a lot of the cost; they
have to find an out-of-band method of engaging the receiving MSP,
advising them of the predicament, and justifying some sort of exception;
they also obviously have to be seen to try to get off the RBL (and we've
seen how hard SORBS, notably, make this) and the receiving ISP can fall
back on the 'well everyone else is fine, so the vast majority of our
expected inbound email is fine, why should we care about you, and change
our behavior because of it?' .... Sending MSP then has to try to
explain the reality to their customer, and risk losing business because
their competitor isn't (right now) having the same problems...

Bottom of my rambly-line is that as a major point of issue with your
post; you're posting the position of the Network or Mail Service
Operator as it 'should' be, but not indeed how it actually is, in practise.

(And FWIW I agree with the poster who pointed out that RBL's would be
unnecessary if network operators took responsibility for the behavior of
their networks (ala their customers). The small players are usually
pretty damn good. It seems that the bigger you get, the less you care
about issues that affect a smaller proportion of your scale.

Which probably explains the attitude that several of the big players
take around rejecting email due to obscure reasons...

Mark.

> i dont think anyone would miss sorbs if it was gone, dare i say it not
> even a single person

while i would not dispute what you think you think, i think you are
thinking quite incorrectly

randy