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

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.