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WLANs As Spam Conduit
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...
...public vigilante executions of spammers? Kinda like a citizens arrest, but more permenant. Just a thought.
Block all ports except 80 if you have to... just don't take away my free access!
These statistics should be taken with a salt lick...
Does spam go well with tequila?
my other penis is a vagina
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.
what about the other 4%... was that accidental?
www.necroticobsession.com
Wait, so this company, "Z/Yen," has determined that 71% of malicious connections to wireless networks are used for sending spam, and they've done so on the strength of setting up a grand total of two WiFi hotspots in one unspecified city (which I assume to be London, because that's where they're located) for an unspecifed time span...and this leads to conclusive results? That's just stupid.
In other news, based on my survey of my apartment, 75% of people are running Mac OS X, and 25% are running Linux.
-Waldo Jaquith
Umm... First, this means that 75% of the connections were not intentional? Is this the equivalent of 75 people saying they're sorry for stepping on your toes, while 25 people did it on purpose?
Second, define "emails". Is that 10? 10,000?
This seems a bit alarmist.
Feh.
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
So let me get this straight. As opposed to just sitting in the apartments or offices or whatever, spammers are now riding around major urban areas trying to find insecure wireless networks? This, to me, would seem to be a tremendous waste of time.
I'll admit, I don't understand why people spam; but the economics of such a thing simply don't seem practicle. The 25% would seem to be about right to me, but that 18% of the total was just for spam, just doesn't seem to add up.
Then again, as Mark Twain said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
You're only as smart as your brain.
The summary misquotes the article here. 71% of the connections sent email - not necessarily spam email. I am surprised the figure wasn't higher.
Anyway it is hardly groundbreaking news that you have to secure wireless internet connections.
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It's easy for the home and business admin to secure his/her AP. But how do public access places like airports and StarBucks counter drive by spamming?
Any ideas?
Remember folks, there are surly looking spammers driving through your surburbian neighborhood right now just looking to abuse your DSL connection through your unsecured access point to send spam.
So if your router gives out a DHCP address in the middle of the night, run outside in your pajamas with a baseball bat. There are spammers you need to teach a lesson.
The Internet is generally stupid
I just received in e-mail..
1) Sue for "Cable Theft" (if cable ISP)
2) Sue for "Denial of Service Attack" (since the intent of spam is to fill up your mailbox, causing you to give up real e-mails.)
3) Sue for "Espionage" if you both received a 'viagra' spamvertisement and the e-mail says it's not commercial spam, because if it's non-commercial, they were watching you through a window and wanted to notify you of viagra!
4) Is the spam for an ergonomic peripheral, like mouse or keyboard or computer chair? Or maybe, the company offers you pills to decrease your hormonones? In either case, this means they think you might have repetitive stress syndrome from using your... tool. This is either "Espionage" (they saw it), or "Intent of Deliberate Harm" (they e-mail you so much shit, they KNOW you are guaranteed to have RSS in your wrists....
5) ???
6) Profit
Cover your eyes and click this link!
The study, as presented is useless except to divide people. They might have just as well said that the internet itself was evil for enabling spam. I can say the same thing about materials used to make billboards. The RSA says, "Don't share, people." Great!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I mean, Im sure most people living near me wouldnt mind downloading pr0n with my connection, but sending spam? Even if they had said hacking I would consider that a stretch. Its not like every kiddy is a script kiddy.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
The finding doesn't surpise me much. As far as I'm concerned, a wireless lan should be considered at least as dangerous as your internet connection, and should be firewalled appropriately. What makes them more dangerous is that it's like having your users sit in your DMZ.. their laptops with wireless cards can be wide open and they don't have a clue. I guess it's just like when those users use a dialup modem account without a firewall, but because they're often connected to the corporate network via a vpn etc, they believe they are somehow more secure. They might well have a ipsec or mppe vpn active, but that doesn't usually stop windows from listening on ports 137/138/445. And how many windows users do you really think are going to run a 'personal' firewall and/or understand what they've got themselves into by going wireless.
This is showing spammers are intelligent and learning. That can't be right can it? :)
Rus
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The PATRIOT act is used to define SPAM as terrorism.
I hope so... If we start hunting down spammers with the same tenacity as if they were terrorists... we'd all be better off.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
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.
I have Mac Stumbler running on my laptop and it pings me whenever I drive past a hotspot. Sometimes the hotspot will be named "public" or "public hotspot" even. (Saw a few of these in Tempe, Arizona. Was pretty amazed, and grateful).
So if you're running one, I thank you.
In the honeypot test, the first unauthorised connection to the WLANs was made in just over two-and-a-half hours.
There was a TV show in the UK that recently did something similar to this with bike theft. They left an unlocked bicycle on the high street of a northern town and set up hidden cameras to watch. Somebody nicked the bike within 30 seconds of the owner walking away. I guess spammers are a bit slower than your average criminal.