Osirusoft Blacklists The World

ariehk writes "As of today, Osirusoft, distributer of the SPEWS and open relay blocklists, among others, is no longer operational. Servers using these lists (including the FTC) are currently rejecting ALL email. This shutdown seems to be in response to a several-week-long DDoS attack on Osirusoft, SPEWS and others, resulting in both sites being down. This has caused much discussion on n.a.n-a.e, including the suggestion that the attack is somehow related to the SoBig worm. The spammers must be hurting if they can devote these kinds of resources to attacking blocklists." Read on below a related submission.

NSXDavid writes "Earlier today our site mysteriously ended up on Joe Jared's Osirusoft SPAM blacklist which is used by lots of antispam software (like SpamAssassin and sendmail). Since he is currently under a serious DDoS attack, there was no way to appeal this decision. We contacted Mr. Jared by phone who informed us that 'everyone needs to stop using Osirusoft and that he's going to be shutting the service down.' Then he says he's going to blacklist 'the world' (aka, ban *.*.*.*) to get his point across. Later on this evening, he apparently went ahead and did just that. Succumbing to lawsuits and DDoS, a once great blacklist is dead. SpamAssassin is removing it from their config in the next release (rc3) and email admins around the globe are reconfiguring their mail servers."

Comments

Re:Well, fine, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't receive the email. Duh.

Re:Well, fine, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

what the hell do you think a "*" entry to 127.0.0.2 for all zones, that reports "Please stop using relays.osirusoft.com" means?

Maybe it wasn't a DDoS attack

[Yeah-or-something]

SPEWS probably only had about 2 or 3 IPs left that weren't blacklisted anyway.

Oh, that's great

[El Cubano]

This shutdown seems to be in response to a several-week-long DDoS attack on Osirusoft,

They guy is dealing with a huge DDoS attack and we link his page from the front page of /. ??

I guess we can't make things any worse, but come on. Give the guy a break.

Re:Sweet, Sweet Justice.

[josh crawley]

First they blacklisted the porno spammers... ...and I emailed nobody, for I was not a porno spammer.
Then they blacklisted the open relays... ...and I emailed nobody, for I was not an open relay.
Then they blacklisted the ISP dialup subnets.... ...and I emailed nobody, for I was not on an ISP dialup subnet.
Then they blacklisted everyone... ...and there was nobody left for me to email.

Re:trusted signing of mail servers

[AKnightCowboy]

there is already enough infrastructure in place for this to occur now. verisign and friends as trusted signers, and smtp-ssl. the only other thing required is the will to put it to work.

Oh that's just fscking great. And to register a trusted mail server will no doubt cost $1000/year for a Verisign "trusted" certificate. Screw that. If you can do the same thing but make it open source then I'd say go for it, but if I have to be ass-raped by Verisign for another minute I'll give up on the entire god damn Internet.

Re:blacklists -- bah!

[steeviant]

If you learn anything by past occurances, all this means is that the next generation of blocklists will be even more BOFHish.

I spot a fatal error in your reasoning, I contend that it's not actually possible for anyone to be more BOFHish than Joe Jared.

Re:Blacklists and reality

[fussman]

that'd solve my RIAA C&D order problems

Re:Garbage

[Vermifax]

Actually according to standard NANAE retards, he should find a new isp and/or get a new ipaddress.

Re:Blacklists and reality

[commodoresloat]

That explains a lot. I have a few email addresses and shortly after I put two of them on a web page near each other they started getting email from each other. I started to worry that I was sleepwalking to my computer and sending myself invitations to look at porn.....

At Last!

[Poeir]

Finally, a blacklist that doesn't let any spam mail through.

Re:Well, fine, but...

[lrucker]

Well, he could send out a mass email to everyone who's ever used his lists...

Re:Spammers: BRING IT ON

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect he thinks that spending dozens of hours on this scheme is some sort of revenge against Bill Gates or something.

Re:sad news, but there are alternatives

[jimbobborg]

Actually, it is our place and we do have absolute power. Thank you.

There is a solution to spam.

[Anonymous Coward]

Round up the top 10 spammers in the world and shoot them. Repeat every 2-3 months. Watch the amount of spam decrease exponentially.

Sorry about that, just venting. Seriously, something must be done, or else email as we know it will become completely unusable in the next year or two.

penicillin

[RevDobbs]

My private key leaked for a bit, but a shot at the clinic helped that.

I mean, it wasn't SPEWing or anything, just a little leak...

Re:Blacklists and reality

[rot26]

Right on. Oh, by the way, take a look at this wicked screen saver.

attachment: wicked_scr.scr

The simplest solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have not received a spam for years, despite not having any filtering in place. Wanna know how to do it?

You too can be spam-free for only $4.99! Just send an email to spam.me@spot.the.dog with your credit card details to find out!

An alternative

[fmaxwell]

Yes, let's kick blind people off the net!

That's unnecessary. Just hide their keyboards instead.

Aw, too bad

[Jack Auf]

The anon admins that run SPEWS should simply do what they told us to do when we were unfairly blacklisted due to an alleged spammer on a class C eight class C blocks away from ours - Just change ISP's or IP blocks.

What's that? It's a huge PITA that would be highly disruptive to your business? Well maybe the DDOSers have a newgroup you can post to and be either a) ignored or b) ridiculed.

Looks like SPEWS is 'collateral damage' in the spam war. Yeah, sucks doesn't it.