Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

71% of Spam Servers are Located in China

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the why-can't-that-wall-work-both-ways dept.

aspelling writes " We all know that majority of consumer electronics and other goods sold in US stores is produced in China. But China specialty extends beyond consumer electronics, clothes and automotive components. According to Commtouch Software research 71% of all spam servers are located in this People Republic. "Since Jan. 1, we've seen probably a 30% to 40% increase" in spam traffic" Commtouch CEO says. BusinessWeek reports about this issue."

14 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. Use blacklists... by grub · · Score: 5, Interesting


    If you don't know anyone in China (or Asia) you can use a blacklist for the whole region. My firewall with OpenBSD's awesome spamd autoupdates its tarpit blacklists every couple of hours. One good list for Asian IPs is here.

    I love the idea of tarpitting, seeing spammers connections being tied up for ~3300 seconds (my highest) warms my heart. If more people did it that'd mean less overall spam traffic.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:Use blacklists... by Bob+Zer+Fish · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just for other people's info... since I didn't know:
      Tarpitting discourages spamming without permanently blocking an offending IP address. Tarpitting works by monitoring traffic and applying sluggish responses to remote IPs showing spam-like behavior. For example, if an IP sends too many messages to users during an email session, tarpitting starts slowing MDaemon's response. If the spam-like behavior includes excessive unknown addresses during a session, the remote server can be suspended from access for a user-specified amount of time.

    2. Re:Use blacklists... by Mysticode · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's not going to help too much. According to the article, 71% of the URLs appearing in spam messages point to websites hosted in China however 60% of spam messages are sent from the US. In fact, China (although second) is only the location of the mail servers sending about 6% of the spam messages that they analyzed. The post was not too clear on that but the source article is.

    3. Re:Use blacklists... by OrangeTide · · Score: 5, Funny

      Spam is all Bush's fault. I didn't get this much spam when clinton was president. And when Carter was president I didn't get any spam at all!

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  2. The Great (fire)Wall of China by kent_eh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If China can keep much of the rest of the internet inaccessable to their citizens, why can't the rest of the world block the polution that China is transmitting?

    --

    ---
    "I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
  3. Great by crumbz · · Score: 5, Funny


    Yet another IT service being outsourced overseas........

    Write your congressperson and demand that SPAM jobs be kept at home!

  4. Re:Obligitory.... by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Funny

    Meat-flavored spam? I might actually like it...

    --
    tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
  5. blackholes by Feyr · · Score: 5, Informative

    there was a tip posted to NANOG this morning. you can use china.blackholes.us as a RBL (look at their page, they have other lists) to effectively block all mail from china's IPs

  6. How Ironic by 2names · · Score: 5, Insightful

    it is that 71% of a form of communication originates from a country that tries its damndest to stifle the voice of its people.

    --
    "I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
    1. Re:How Ironic by Stephen+Samuel · · Score: 5, Insightful
      China is not trying to stifle the voices of their people as much as it is trying to prevent them from reading certain things. Supressing speech inside of China is simply an easy way to limit what people can read.

      They don't really care that much about what the outside world can read about China, as long as that information doesn't get back into the country.

      --
      Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
  7. Another source by broothal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Strange, because USA is still #1 in all 3 categories listed (scroll down) on spamhaus.org
    Besides - who cares where the exploited servers are? Soon (my guess is - less than 6 months) the majority of spams will be sent via zombies taken over by some worm or virus. These computers will be spread all over the world. The only solution is to nip it in the butt. Make spam illegal (as it is in Europe) and sue the pants of the spammers. Enough of those stupid atempts to pretend something is being done. We all know that the spammers are from Gods own country - hijacking machines whereever it's easiest.
    /me sets mode -rant

  8. Don't jump so quickly on the Chinese by smr2x · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Spam may be coming from Chinese _servers_, but I doubt 71% of the spammers are Chinese. Everyone in this thread seems to think that actual Chinese people are doing the spamming. I don't think this is the case.

    --
    .
  9. Re:Avoid the Noid, he ruins web experiences by Yokaze · · Score: 5, Informative

    Question: How does "71% percent of spam servers are located in China" quoted in the article correlate with the whitepaper stating "Figure 1: North America and International Spam Messages Sent Daily" depicting 2005: North America 8.5 billion, International 11 billion?

    Maybe it is in the subtle difference of spam messages sent, and servers used to send them.

    --
    "Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
  10. RTFA! by koehn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Doesn't anyone read the article?

    It said that 71% of the URLs in spam go to web servers in China, not that 71% of spam comes from China!

    The vast majority of spam that hits my mail server comes from the US (comcast, rr.com, etc) machines that have been compromised.

    Tools like bigevil.cf (SpamAssassin plugin) help me to filter those spams with Chinese URLs.