[Gllug] ping

[Nix]

On Wed, 08 Feb 2006, Ryan Cartwright gibbered uncontrollably:
> Nix wrote:
>> s/Saves a lot of overhead for our server/Stops our server being used as
>> a spam source/
> 
> Spam source? Spam router maybe.

The distinction between routers and sources is minimal in my eyes; the only
difference is that you don't *intend* to spam :/

>> The spammers and malware senders *intentionally* send mail and viruses
>> to unroutable addresses with the intent of having them bounced to their
>> real recipients.
>>
>  I've always assumed as much but can we really say that is the intent
> of *all* malware senders? We've had plenty of messages sent ,
> apparently from zombies, to real (and not particularly guessable)
> addresses as well.

My understanding (from those who have interviewed spammers and so forth)
is that it is the intent of a hell of a lot of them. They don't care how
they get their pollution into your mailbox, just that they do.

Set up your machine to accept mail to unroutable addresses for a few
minutes and look at the return-paths of some of the flood of garbage
that comes in (on my system it vastly dominates all correctly-addressed
email, spam or not).

> I put our ACL in place for the very reason of stoping our server
> bouncing these messages all over the place. I was amazed to see it was
> bouncing such messages when I arrived.

Good to see it's stopped :)

-- 
`... follow the bouncing internment camps.' --- Peter da Silva
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