A New Type Of Realtime Blocklist: The SURBL

Glamdrlng writes "The SURBL, or "Spam URI Realtime Blocklist", represents a nexus of RBL's and content filtering that may bring us one step closer to a spam magic bullet. While traditional RBL's perform a DNS lookup on the connecting mail server, SURBL's take this a step further by parsing the text of the email looking for URI's and doing a lookup on those web servers. They also prevent "joe jobs" by maintaining a whitelist of legitimate web servers whose domain names may show up in spam messages, e.g. EBay, Paypal, Microsoft, etc. The only requirement to implement the SURBL is a plugin on your MTA such as spamassassin that can parse the body of each email. While there is no MTA that directly supports SURBL's without a plugin, the author hints at one being in development."

Comments

Time to dig out this old post.

[Anonymous Coward]

This article advocates a

(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
(x) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Re:Time to dig out this old post.

[tds67]

I think the preceding post:

( ) Was funny.
( ) Was informative.
( ) Was interesting.
( ) Was informative and funny.
( ) Was interestingly informative.
(x) Was funny in an informative sort of way.
( ) Was rehash.
( ) Is itself spam.
( ) Is overrated.
( ) Gave me gas.

We adjust the frequency of the shields,

[winkydink]

The adjust the frequency of the phasers.

I don't see this as the be-all, end-all for spam, but I do find it a very interesting and potentially very effective arrow for my spam-killer quiver.

SURBL?

[Mateito]

I mean, really, who comes up with the names for these things?

Show me one self-respecting spammer who's going to quake in their boots at the threat of being hit with a "SURBL".

("Oh no.. please.. not the SURBL. Don't SURBL me.. Its too much... no.. No.. NOOOOOO!)

Why not just call it a "NERF" and be done with it?

I propose we come up with Spam deterrents with names like "Knuckle Duster", "Jagged Bottle", "Bloodied Crowbar" and "Bubba the Love Truncheon".

Re:SURBL?

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose we come up with Spam deterrents with names

Personally, I like BASTARD:

Bad Ass Spam Threat And Reduction Deterrant

Re:A plugin?

[Mateito]

> extra software on the ... client side.. not a simple requirement as
> it cannot be implemented universally

Bollocks. Send it to random users as an encrypted zip file with the key in an attached jpeg and a title like "returned mail" from a user called "hg477d762@hotmail.com", and enough people will install it to make it effective.

Never underestimate the stupidity of end users.

Re:My proposed solution to spam

[scrytch]

You are advocating a

(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

(x) Users of email will not put up with it

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.

(I'm feeling nice today)