China and its Relation With Spam

smooth wombat writes "Asia Times has a nice article about why China is becoming the spam capital of the world. Steve Linford, of Spamhaus fame, is quoted several times in the article and offers some insight into how the Chinese ISPs operate. Steves quote at the end of the article pretty much sums up why China isn't doing anything to curb the hosting of spam website servers in the country: "They simply don't want to know - China Telecom doesn't care because they're government-owned and there is no pressure coming from the government. Meanwhile, our statistics on spam volumes and the number of spammers setting up in China are going up and up and up.""

Comments

Racist kneejerk:This is a good thing

[Staplerh]

Obviously, you did not read the article. Perhaps I am being too harsh - perhaps you did read the article, and found it to reinforce your pre-existing prejudicial views towards the Far East. I quote from the article.

The spam chain is complex. Basically, though, most people responsible for sending spam are based in the US, though a growing number are now organized criminals in Eastern Europe and Russia. China is the location of choice for the servers that host the spammers' websites and for buying and selling lists of spam zombies, or personal computers (PCs) deliberately infected with spam-enabling viruses.

The criminals, as you so derisively call the citizens of these far-east countries, are using the Chinese as middlemen. Yes, this makes them accomplices, but using such inflammatory satements such as criminals, trespassors is rediculous.

It is fortunate that you don't have to communicate with those countries, because I would assume with neanderthal views such as your own you would have very little to contribute to any intelligent conversation.

Re:RBL

[Neil Blender]

Isn't there some way we can identify the entire Chinese IP block

Here it is: 0.0.0.0/7 (7 is China's country code - deny all from this and you will receive no spam from China)

Blackhole?

[SonicRED]

I'm looking for a way to blackhole the entirety of China.

Every single hacking attempt on my server originates from a Chinese IP. This is also true of every single spam connection attempt as well.

Now there are probably some of you reading this saying "But where do you draw the line? Oh the slipperly slope!" If you are one of these people I have this to say: give me a break.

I have no Chinese customers nor any relevant content on my site. Given their draconian Government firewall it is a bit hypocritical to criticize me for wanting to block access particularly when I'm doing it for secuirty purposes. This is not going to harm the Utopian dream of a free and open internet. In a brief grep through the logs I was unable to find a single legitimate hit to my server from any Asian addresses. The same check showed literally thousands of hacking/spam attempts per week. The line ends with China and they drew first blood.

So my question is this: does anyone publish or maintain a list of IP ranges that I can block through IPtables? That entire country is a stain on the internet and I'm looking for the bleach.