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Spam's U.S. Roots

Posted by michael on from the part-of-the-problem-not-part-of-the-solution dept.

ahab_2001 writes "Notwithstanding how tired my finger is getting from deleting all of those unsolicited messages from China and Korea, Information Week reports that a study of filtered messages by the spam-blocking firm CipherTrust revealed that some 86% of spam originates in the U.S. Apparently, a very limited set of IPs with high-bandwidth connections is dishing out the bulk of the spam, according to this study."

20 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah! We're #1! We're #1! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh wait, that's not a good thing in this case.

  2. Crush by Davak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    a very limited set of IPs with high-bandwidth connections is dishing out the bulk of the spam

    Crush those sites. Turn them off. Then repeat the study.

    We should treat spam like a disease... and perform meaningful research on it.

    Davak

    1. Re:Crush by wwest4 · · Score: 5, Funny

      > Crush those sites. Turn them off. Then repeat the study.

      ...this will be the sixth time we have destroyed them, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.

    2. Re:Crush by halowolf · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Well its obvious what the rest of the world should do! We should add the entire American IP address range to the great blacklist and move along! :)

      Its not like other countries havn't been blockaded...

    3. Re:Crush by geminidomino · · Score: 5, Informative

      AOL v. Cyberpromotions established that servers are private property.

      Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728 established that forcing advertising upon unwilling recipients is NOT protected speech.

      Spammers can *invoke* the first amendment all they like. (HINT: They also claim they are legitimate, ethical buisnesses). Rule #1: Spammers lie.

    4. Re:Crush by The+Ultimate+Fartkno · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Crush those sites? A sound idea. Start here. It's a Spam Vampire site set up by one of the more vicious anti-spammers I've ever seen in action. Non-caching, image-reaping, website-burning, bandwith-sucking action, all with a scorecard and a throttle. Now if we can just get this modded up so that a few thousand people are all playing at the same time...

  3. Limited set of IP's? by tpwch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Great, give me a list and I'll block them on my mail server.

    --
    Posted by a Debian GNU/Linux user
    1. Re:Limited set of IP's? by tokennrg · · Score: 5, Informative

      Spamhaus will certainly help you out with a list of IP's to block. They'll also tell you what country spams the most and what ISP a majority of the spam comes from, just check the stats at the bottom of the homepage. Spamhaus is also one of the few DNS Blacklists around that you can actually work with.

      Normally they list IP addresses that spam comes from , unlike some lists like the five-ten group that lists all but 1 IP address (127.0.0.1). Spamhaus will also remove IP's that no longer spew spam and so legitimate businesses don't get blocked erroneously.

      Spamhaus also has a nifty thing called The ROKSO List which lists know repeat offenders and spam gangs so ISP's can keep from signing them up for service in the first place.

  4. Are any of us suprised? by TaintedPastry · · Score: 5, Interesting
    While I do get the few 'nigerian national' emails, most of them seem to be in pretty g00d 3ngli$h.

    What do I do find morally distrubing is that there are geeks out there making assloads of cash providing a conduit for this spam with high powered servers and keeping the senders essentially nameless.

  5. I'm confused by pedestrian+crossing · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why doesn't spam come under the same scrutiny and attempts to shut it down as P2P?

    If it is mostly as centralized as this study indicates, it should be easy.

    OK, I know the answer (nobody's precious "IP" is threatened by spam), but if there are going to be attempts to regulate the Internet, it seems like this is a far more productive place to start.

    --
    A house divided against itself cannot stand.
    1. Re:I'm confused by lunatik42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Spam doesn't come under the same fire as P2P because it *promotes* consumerism and the "entertainment" industry, whereas file sharing circumvents the mass market etc. completely. Ergo, most of the war on spam is fought by the people - no one on top of the dogpile wants to regulate advertising. Besides, there are anti-spam filters being sold all over the place. That's another way to capitalize on the phenomenon.

  6. What are those? by Quixote · · Score: 5, Interesting
    a very limited set of IPs with high-bandwidth connections is dishing out the bulk of the spam,

    I skimmed the article, but couldn't find the answer to the question that, I'm sure, is on most /.ers minds: what are those IPS???

  7. That's BRILLIANT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    We should start sending out "fake" spam with encoded music/movies in it. RIAA and MPAA would buy some new laws to stop spam.

  8. Nice Advertisement.. by inkdesign · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What CipherTrust REALLY means is 86% of their potential clients reside in the US.

  9. T-Systems connects Scott Richter's net by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to this, notorious spammer Scott Richter has his own netblock (69.6.0.0-69.6.79.255), which until recently was connected to the internet through Taiwan based ISP Chunghwa Telecom. After they gave up on him, Germany based T-Systems took over. If you have any problems with spam from this netblock, their security team would like to hear about it. They have announced that they will terminate the contract if Richter violates it.

  10. Re:Me... Trolling? by mobby_6kl · · Score: 5, Funny

    >Funny. My finger's not tired

    Funny, my finger isn't tired either, but my hand is.

    Oh...maybe I should stop visiting all those sites mentioned in the emails I get.

  11. I need your help by Saint+Aardvark · · Score: 5, Informative
    Weirdly enough, I just wrote about something like this in my journal. In a nutshell, I've been contacted by a list seller asking if the files on my site mean I know how to get in touch with The Bulk Club (you remember The Bulk Club, right?)

    I'm looking for suggestions on what to do next. In the meantime, whatever you do, do not run this command:

    while [ true ] ; do wget http://www.emailsupply.net/sample.txt -O /dev/null ; done
    That's a 4MB sample of the lists the gentleman has for sale, and surely the Slashdot effect runs the risk of using up all his bandwidth. Don't do it, I beg you!
    --
    Carousel is a lie!
    1. Re:I need your help by gptelemann · · Score: 5, Interesting

      while [ true ] ; do wget http://www.emailsupply.net/lists.php -O /dev/null ; done

      Try this also: large file, and hit the PHP, not a static page!

    2. Re:I need your help by Kallahar · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It appears that his host is onlinehome-server.com which has a price list at here which shows their max monthly bandwidth as being between 25 and 100 gigs. At 90k/s bandwidth (their end) that's 324 megs/hour/person, so assuming 10 people do it it would take 30 hours each to hit their cap. 100 people could do it in 3.

      Sounds like fun :)

  12. Re:not by gorbachev · · Score: 5, Informative

    Spamcop reports on SENDING IP addresses.

    The study was reporting on who actually sent the spam.

    It is widely known US based spammers use open proxies, zombies, open relays and paid foreign spammers abroad to hide their tracks.

    So both studies are correct. It's just that they're reporting different things.

    --
    In Soviet Russia, I ruled you