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

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 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.