Slashdot Mirror
FairUCE - the Smart Email Proxy
Jestrzcap writes "This just posted on Freshmeat: FairUCE (which stands for 'Fair use of Unsolicited Commercial Email') is an SMTP proxy, running between multiple instances of Postfix, that verifies email by attempting to verify the sender through lookups (a user customized challenge/response). It claims to be able to 'stop a vast majority of spam' without the need for content filters, and 'virtually eliminates spoofed addresses, phishing, and even many viruses with a few cached DNS look-ups and a couple of if/then statements'."
I've already had problems getting email from my government coworkers with spam validators like this. The military really doesn't like broadcasting who their email servers are... So they regularly get sent to Junk Mail.
If MTA's on the Internet required the forward and reverse DNS lookups to match ~70% of spam (and viruses) would disappear. This requires ISP's to correcty configure their DNS, which unfortunately doesn't happen because people are lazy.
This is very common - and not just with a real users address. I have seen thousands of "bounce" messages come to the various domains I own as spammers use the domain prefixed by various random bogus names at whateverdomainitis.com.
Luckily (for us, anyway) we've now got the proper software written and configured to keep this crap from ever hitting a mailbox we own; however, a more serious problem here is the "do-gooder" problem.
It goes like this. Joe Spammer decides to use several_thousand_names@mydomainname.com as his assumed identity. A do-gooder site gets reports of that mydomainname.com is "sending" this spam to, oh, say a zillion people. They promptly "blacklist" my domain -- from whence, I hasten to point out, no spam has ever been, or will ever be, sent. However, my domain is a valid domain that I depend upon to make my living. Various ISP's, through a compounding of stupidity (but still with the intent to "do good"), promptly bounce our valid emails, because the do-gooders site says we are spammers.
The end result is that because some spammer out on the net has used our domain name, we, not the spammer, are penalized and in a real financial sense.
In the meantime, the spammer, who like any competent spammer watches the do-gooder's sites very carefully, notices that my domain is banned, and promptly switches to a new domain. Meanwhile, I can't send mail to my customers. Meanwhile, I get thousands of "bounce" messages that have to be handled by some layer of software or, Darwin forbid, by one of the legitimate users at my site. Random netizens out there have been temporarily "protected" from (typically) one spam email per email address they have, while our customers are cut off at the knees, as are we.
So what the do-gooder has accomplished is to cause the spammer to take another domain (probably from an automated list, no sweat off the spammer's brow whatsoever) and the do-gooder has hurt a legitimate net citizen who never spams.
Everybody's trying to do good here except the spammer. The do-gooder and the ISPs using the do-gooder list hurt our end users by blocking mail they should be getting; they hurt us by screwing up our commications channel to our customer base; but -- they don't hurt the spammer one flipping bit, and they do no permanent good for the average netizen who gets one of these spams. The spammer just restarts his list at the break point and begins with a new domain; the end user, after a short delay, gets a new spam with a new domain name, and the temporary respite for them is over -- and the net result of the do-gooder's blacklist is no good whatesoever has been done. Some users will get two spams if the spammer restarts the list back a little to make sure he doesn't miss anyone. Great, eh?
Obviously, do gooder blacklisting doesn't work, and cannot work. Mostly, it causes harm to legitimate parties.
IMHO, if Internet mail is going to be unregulated, then it needs to be just that -- unregulated. If spammers are going to be fined and/or jailed, then the govt(s) need/s to get the heck after it (and probably needs to close the international email borders to any non-co-operative country so that such a thing is possible.) The latter seems far too severe; the former is being degraded by do-gooders and the people they confuse into accepting their services in an area they should have no absolutely authority in to a degree that should be unacceptable to any thinking person.
The only good solution to spam I know of is to use whitelists and web submission entry gateways. If someone is on your whitelist, you get email from them. If someone is not on your whitelist, they get an auto-reply email telling them to mail you via a form on a website. The form, which has to be hand-filled out, mails you at a whitelisted address that is not publ
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So, I'd disagree with your conclusion that blacklisting doesn't work; if a spammer can use one of your IP addresses to spam, then you need to fix up your system to be more secure. A quick browse of mail logs will show any unexpected outgoing e-mail, and you can always feed your mailserver IP to spews.org and see if they list you (they're one of the most aggressive listing places).
If it's not coming from one of your IP addresses, then it doesn't affect mail sent from your domain, only from the spammer's IP addresses. Hence there is no fallout on you unless I use an aggressive list like SPEWS, and you are being blocked because your ISP hosts spammers himself.
I appear to have a blog. Odd.
I've been using Challenge/Response for nearly 3 years. And I disagree with your critiques. Let's take this point by point:
- Users hate them: There is a kernel of truth to this. Some users do hate them. Those users hate challenge/response so much that they instigate fights. They submit their IP addresses to RBLs for blacklisting. These are a very annoying, and vocal MINORITY. By far most users are agnostic. They deal with the challenge once and then they're done.
- automated systems can't get past them: Again, there's a kernel of truth here. If you have badly configured your C/R you're going to be in trouble. But a properly configured C/R has absolutely no problems.
- they're almost always subverted: Really? In the last month I've had over 4000 pieces of email delivered to me from unknown addresses. Only 10 of those have been confirmed. Of the ones that were confirmed 2 of them were spam. This was easily remidied by removing those 2 addresses from my whitelist and adding them to my blacklist.
- never will gain the acceptance of the user community enough to become effective: While C/R may never gain the acceptance of the user community, I don't think it's for the reasons that you cited. I think the reason is that it's too hard to set up correctly. But that being said, it doesn't need the acceptance of the user community to be effective. It works for me today whether or not you use it.
IMHO, what you don't know about C/R is quite large.I use TMDA. I've got it configured so that any email I send to unknown addresses will be allowed to respond for 7 days. After that, they go into C/R. For my bill pay services, I give them a special address that allows them in forever, but that's tied to them so that I'll know if they ever hand it out to someone else.
Personally, I think it'd be better if the entire world started using C/R. It'd be better because then everyone would understand that sending email to an unknown party involves a formal introduction process. This would cut down on the number of people who get confused when they receive a challenge. But if this doesn't happen it's not that big a deal. The number of confused people is already small.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.