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WLANs As Spam Conduit

Posted by chrisd on from the spammers-are-still-evil dept.

Saint Aardvark writes "According to this article, a honeypot was recently set up on two wireless LANs. 25% of the connections observed were deliberate, and 71% of those were to send spam. Even more reason to take care of your ether." These statistics should be taken with a salt lick...

4 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Spam on the cell. by zbowling · · Score: 5, Informative

    Spam and telemarketing calls to a persons cell phone (or any system where the person that is being called has to pay for the call) is currently illegal in the states under telecommunications act of 1989. Its the same act that allows us to ask to be put on a company's not calling list and sue if they call back. Do a google for it. Some cool ways to protect yourself using the law.

    --
    No.
  2. Port 80 is Perfectly Safe by waldoj · · Score: 3, Informative

    Even port leaving port 80 isn't safe due to the Form_Mail.pl security issue that is plauging web servers all over and dumping spam into a mail spool near you.

    There's no problem with keeping port 80 open. It's running an unsecured web-based non-authenticated mail relay that's the problem.

    -Waldo Jaquith

  3. Re:4 percent? by eander315 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Read that sentence a little closer. It says that 25% of the connections were deliberate, and among those connections, 71% were used for spam. That means that something like 17% of the total connections were used for spam.

    The other 75% is the part that is presumably connecting by mistake.

  4. Sounds familiar by gmajor · · Score: 3, Informative

    For a class I took, a professor set up a temporary mail server that we needed to use for an assignment. He of course took precautions, making sure mail was only routed to a certain domain.

    But within 48 hours, the mail server was found by spammers!

    He even had a great idea for anti-spam software/blocking. Set up these honeypots in different geographical locations, but don't publish the addresses; let the spammers find them. Have them accept mail as if they would route it, but do not actually send it out. We can assume any e-mails received are spam. Make a collection of spam e-mails, and have filters block out mail that closely matches all the mails the honeypots have received.