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

sad news, but there are alternatives

[Indy1]

For mail admins around the world try these alternatives.

bl.spamcop.net
one of the best blacklists, it catches a huge % of incoming spam, and virtually no collateral damage.

blackholes.easynet.nl
almost as good as spamcop, and seems to nail a lot of the spam hauses

dynablock.easynet.nl
nukes a lot of the dsl and dialup spammers

argentina.blackholes.us
south american country, what more needs be said ? : )

brazil.blackholes.us
ditto

cn-kr.blackholes.us
china and korea, what more need be said ? : )

turkey.blackholes.us
whole lotta spammers here

sbl.spamhaus.org
a bit too conservative for my tastes, but gets a lot of spam gangs, and has very low collateral damage

bl.reynolds.net.au
if you want to use the spews list, this provides a feed for it

malaysia.blackholes.us
another spammy asian country

wanadoo-fr.blackholes.us
one of the worst european isps

hongkong.blackholes.us
another spammy asian country

Re:If major blacklists can be sued...

[hazem]

an't send an e-mail to my server because I blocked your domain? Too f-in bad. Contact your "customer" with a letter or by phone.

But if YOU are my ISP, and I'm a paying customer with an inbox, I expect that I will receive mail that is sent to me. If this is not the case, you need to specify that to me so I can decide whether I want to use your service.

By blocking mail to my inbox, which I've paid for, you could possibly even be considered in breach of contract.

Of course, if you're just running your own server, you're free to do what you want with it.

I'll dance on their grave

[jarran]

Quite frankly, they desserve it. I've had no end of problems with one of my mailservers after it was incorrectly blacklisted by Osirusoft, even though:

1. It was not an open relay, and as far I could tell from my logs, prior to banning it they never actually checked to see if it was an open relay.
2. Their own online checker, which I activated several times, repeatedly showed that the server in question was not an open relay.

The online checker repeatedly told me that my server would be scheduled for more tests, and would then be removed from the blacklist.

But this never happened. No further checks were made. My server was never removed from the blacklist. And what's more, Osirusoft refused to reply to any of my e-mails. They refused to even explain why they were blacklisting, despite the fact on several occasions I politely requested either removal from the blacklist, or an explanation as to why I was on it. Ultimately I had to get a different IP address for the machine in question, which was exteremely inconvenient.

I'm strongly opposed to spam. However, any company that offers services to block spam have to accept that they will sometimes accidentally cause problems for legitemate users, and they have to have mechanisms in place for such users to sort the situation out. Ignoring people who have legitemate complaints against you is not the way to do it.