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

Blacklists and reality

[Dancin_Santa]

It may take a little more work, but the only solution to spam is the whitelist.

Re:Blacklists and reality

[WolfWithoutAClause]

What happens when the spammers start using worms and viruses to create open relays on people you trust?

Re:Blacklists and reality

[Pig Hogger]

Whitelists are unworkable. How do you reach someone for the first time?

Re:Blacklists and reality

[JoeBuck]

Yes, let's kick blind people off the net! If they can't parse your machine-unreadable image, screw them. Right?

Me, I do pretty well with Bayesian spam filters.

Re:Blacklists and reality

[magores]

This is fine for person to person, but what about person to business?

Let's pretend I'm a business. I WANT you to send me an email.

I WANT emails from every single person in the world that isn't a customer yet.

I NEED to accept every email on the chance that one of them might be a sale. (Yep. This means I need to look at the ones that include *details* in the subject.)

Whitelist doesn't work here.

I do NOT want a phone call from you as first contact. A one minute email response is now a 40 minute phone call explaining that "Yes you must turn on your computer first if you want to actually use it"

White-list is unworkable for business, because everything must be "whited" by default.

Challenge-Response is unworkable because I/we (as a small to mid business) simply could not keep up with that. Sure. One of the real programmers we have (i'm not one of them) could come up with an auto-bot to respond to challenge-response, but then we end up back where we started, don't we?

I don't have the answers. But I do know what the answers aren't. And Whitelist/Challenge-Repsonse aren't it

Just my 3 cents worth of rant for today.

Sweet, Sweet Justice.

[eyez]

This isn't any different from any time spews blacklists anybody; They've never claimed to not blacklist legitimate people. And, it's impossible to contact spews to get yourself removed if unfairly blacklisted. Everyone in the world, who has been blacklisted unfairly by spews is now celebrating. Hopefully now, people using spews will realize that spews really is a poor solution to the problem, that causes more harm than it prevents.

Re:Sweet, Sweet Justice.

[gid]

spews listens to usenet for unblock requests, my work's class c was black listed when we got it. I had to post to usenet, eventually I got a response and was unblocked, but ya, it's kind of a pain. I think spam assassin/filtering is a much better method, but I suppose a dual pronged attack is better, SA can use blacklists to rate email as well I think....

Re:Sweet, Sweet Justice.

[eyez]

[i]If an ISP has 5000 customers and 3/4 of them are unable to email family at AOL or Yahoo because they're being blocked due to ISP having a spammer or two, the spammers tend to get dropped.[/i]

Yes, this is indeed a poor policy. SPEWS exists so that the people who are violently against spam can pass the burden of fighting it onto the innocents who aren't as bothered by it.

Re:Sweet, Sweet Justice.

[Mr Bill]

Here again is another move that shows how responsible these idiots really are. To notify people to stop using their blacklist, they decide to blacklist the world. What a brilliant idea. After all email isn't really that important.

Email used to be one of the most reliable means of communicating on the net. You were always guaranteed that your message would either arrive, or you would hear about it (bounce). But with all of the email worms Microsoft has written (you have to admit these email worms/viruses practically write themselves), and the idiotic attempts at stopping the SPAM problem, email is becoming practically useless. mail admins are using blacklists and just dropping mail, which is effectively breaking the mail system. SPAMers may be the cause, but what is the point in destroying email all together. I would rather receive 100 SPAMs a day that loose one legitimate email that was intended for me. Sort of the same reason I am against the death penalty.

As blacklists go, SPEWS is the worst of them. They block entire netblocks so that innocent bystanders will fight their fight for them. If my IP gets blocked even though I haven't sent any SPAM, I am expected to bitch to my ISP and/or move to another ISP, and then maybe in a couple of months my IP might get removed from the list.

Reminds me of the way things work in the middle east. Pick either side, and they are using the same tactics. The Palestinians are blowing up civilians in the hope that the civilians left alive will do something about their problems. And the Israelli government is firing missiles into crowded cities to kill some suspected criminals and anyone else who happens to be within 100 meters of these guys...

Guerilla tactics like SPEWS employ won't work in the long run, and I am happy that SPEWS is getting hit hard.

SPEWS is claiming that the SPAMers are hitting them with this DDos, but I wouldn't be surpirsed if it was some disgruntled and innocent bystanders who were hit by the SPEWS "Collateral Damage" misile.

Re:Sweet, Sweet Justice.

[eyez]

No, SPEWS exists so that the people who are violently against spam can pass the burden of fighting it onto the people who are responsible for causing it, i.e. spam-friendly ISPs.

The fact that "innocents" are caught up in the block is unfortunate, but unavoidable from a practical standpoint. SPEWS doesn't list netblocks because they have a spammer or two present.

Idiotic rambling like this is exactly why spews was accepted at all in the first place.

When you post on NANAE and say "Help, i've been blacklisted but my company has nothing to do with spam!", Everyone replies with "Sorry, SPEWS is run by mighty space robots from the future who have travelled back in time to stop it SPAM from destroying the world. Unfortunately, we have no way of contacting them. Your only hope is to talk your isp into kicking off their spammer clients, or change isp's. Maybe the robots will unblacklist you then."

SPEWS doesn't consider the innocents being caught up as unfortunate, they consider them the target. The collateral damage is where they're trying to affect the internet.

If it was about blocking spam and ISP's they'd strategically blacklist ISP-critical machines and the spammers. There's no reason to blacklist the innocents. ISP's won't listen to them about not hosting spammers, and have you tried to find good decent hosting that doesn't rip you off? Especially if you're a larger site.

The "Collateral Damage" is the main damage spews hopes to cause, to try to get innocent people to fight their battles for them.

Garbage

[josh crawley]

I'm sorry, but this guy is a true blue asshole. My condolences for being DDoSed, but by banning "the world" to try to tell people to stop using his service ASAP, plenty of legitimate non-spam email got blocked, meaning that people may have to resend, and in some cases may not even know their email was missed. That's worse than spamming, people.

Oh, I forgot, the standard propaganda line from these SPEWS.ORG type anti-spam fundamentalists is "we didn't block your email, the ISP using our service did, blame them."

Monopoly

[yerricde]

They want you to get flamed to death as further punishment.

"Switch ISPs." So if a major residential cable modem ISP's mail server gets blacklisted, then how is anybody in any of the towns serviced by that cable company supposed to send e-mail to users of ISPs that use SPEWS?

Re:perhaps this is a lesson that needed learned

[Cogneato]

My point exactly. You hit me to get me to complain. Did you ever think that I don't want to take that active of a role in your war? Did you even bother to ask me if I wanted to participate? Are you, or anyone who uses the list offering to help me out with the costs of forcing me to be your soldier?

Here's the deal I am willing to make: if you are going to block an entire C block that I am part of, send me an email and let me know and then I will happily complain to my ISP until I am red in the face. I am willing to make that promise.

But... if you want to just slam me on a list without any regaurd for the costs it will incur for me, then don't expect me to be a happy little soldier. It's just not going to happen.

OH boo hoooooo

[NitroWolf]

Somebody call the waaaaambulance.

I'm an anti-spam nazi, and SPEWS gave us all a bad name. I'm glad SPEWS is dead, and it needs to stay dead. It did nothing good for the anti-spam movement, only exacerbated the situation. With no appeal process and the total lack of caring for innocents leaves me with nothing but happiness to see this travesty of justice get blown into oblivion.

Sometimes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend...

Goodbye Spews... we won't miss you, you hulking piece of ill-thought out crap. Let me wave goodbye with my middle finger.

Now, maybe System Admins without a clue will be forced to take real steps to protect their users from spam, instead of playing the lazy asshole and taking the Hail Mary approach that is SPEWS and hoping for the best.

I feel greasy, now... to have agreed with spammers. I think I'll go take a shower.

Libertarian Newspeak Doesn't Negate Censorship

[FreeUser]

I'm not sure it can be correctly called censorship - that requires a governmental entity.

That is a fucking myth, and I am sick and tired of hearing people parrot that nonsense. Saying a business can't censor because it isn't a government is akin to a black man saying he can't be racist because he is black. These are both examples of the same logical fallacy: just because a behavior is traditionally associated with one entity or group doesn't mean it is impossible for another entity or group to begin behaving in exactly the same behavior.

Obviously, anyone of any ethnicity is capable of becoming a racist, just as anyone with any power or influence over others is capable of engaging in censorship.

Responsible parents routinely censor what their kids see and hear. We as a society, by and large, find this to be an acceptable form of censorship.

Many religions routinely censor what their congregations are and are not allowed to see and hear (the Catholic church has had a censorship office for centuries, but they are hardly alone. The Mormons censor what they deam inappropriate for their membership, just as the Jehovah's Witnesses do, and I really don't need to cite example after example for Islam, do I?).

And finally, yes, many, many companies engage in censorship, both the obvious 'media' companies that bury stories they don't like or can't be bothered with, as well as other more subtle businesses (like Monsanto pressuring Fox News into not running a news story on how their hormone saturated milk was actively harmful to the health of children, an action that resulted in Fox News firing two reporters who refused to disavow their story, and said reporters winning a lawsuit against Fox News under Florida's whistleblower laws).

Anyone with any form of power over another, be it parental, religious, corporate, or governmental, has the power in some capacity to censor information available to those less powerful. It is a telling, and appalling, commentary on our culture to observe just how common this sort of censorship is, and how eager we have become to silence those with opposing viewpoints, rather than to argue the counterpoint (as I am doing here, for example).

Your Libertarian Newspeak definition of censorship is plain wrong. You may have the right to censor what comes across your network, and you may chose to excersize that right, but don't think for a moment you aren't engaging in censorship, or think you can convince the rest of the world (a few gullible moderators aside) you are not simply by trying to spin your verbiage.

And lest there be any doubt as to what censorship is:


censorship
n.

1. The act, process, or practice of censoring.
2. The office or authority of a Roman censor.
3. Psychology. Prevention of disturbing or painful thoughts or feelings from reaching consciousness except in a disguised form.

censor

1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.
2. An official, as in the armed forces, who examines personal mail and official dispatches to remove information considered secret or a risk to security.
3. One that condemns or censures.
4. One of two officials in ancient Rome responsible for taking the public census and supervising public behavior and morals.
5. Psychology. The agent in the unconscious that is responsible for censorship.

tr.v. censored, censoring, censors

To examine and expurgate.

(source: dictionary.com)

You will notice, that with the exception of historical references to Rome, none of these definitions presuppose governmental authority over just plain authority, indeed, quite the contrary.