Boing Boing Founder Warns of "Internet AIDS"

An anonymous reader writes "Cory Doctorow, founder of Boing Boing, says he doesn't have a problem in principle with the automated network defense systems that guard the Internet against malware, spamigation bots, and other network nasties. However, in his article 'The Future of Internet Immune Systems,' he bemoans the problems caused by 'Internet autoimmune disorder' — where the network defenses designed to block network attacks are automated and instantaneous, but the systems in place to reverse erroneous lockdowns are manual and unresponsive."

Comments

Internet AIDS

[Anonymous Coward]

All that sex it has sure would give it AIDS

Re:Internet AIDS

[ackthpt]

All that sex it has sure would give it AIDS

It's your pr0n collection what done it! Shoulda got one of them keyboard covers.

Re:Internet AIDS

[ultranova]

All that sex it has sure would give it AIDS

Maybe, but what the summary describes is an autoimmune syndrome and has nothing to do with AIDS. This, of course, raises the question of why AIDS was even mentioned in the subject.

Could someone go and see the article ? I'd rather not do so myself, because of the Firefox CPU/memory consumption bug would make restarting the browser a neccessity afterwards, and I have a lot of tabs already open.

Re:Internet AIDS

[Anonymous Coward]

A large concentration of internet AIDS can be found in the swimming pool at http://www.habbo.com/. It is advised that we go and block off the pool to help protect it's users from such ailments.

automation is only one-way

[andreyvul]

We still need humans on the other end to fix automation's bugs; algorithms cannot bypass themselves.

Re:automation is only one-way

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what this is about. Automated processes exist to put IP ranges on blacklists. For example, if an IP address sends SPAM, it is quickly blacklisted by a range of DNSBL operators. This happens automatically. But there is no automated process to get IP ranges unblocked again. That's not a matter of bypassing the blocking algorithm. If an IP range owner corrects the problem or if an IP range changes owners, the blacklist operators don't automatically remove the block. If you want your IP off anti-spam DNSBL, you have to plead to the operators of dozens of blacklists, and they often process these pleads manually. There are also lots of local blacklists which you can't plead to be removed from, and you have no idea if you are on these lists and whether there is an automated process which removes your IP if there is no more hostile behaviour.

Re:automation is only one-way

[stonecypher]

algorithms cannot bypass themselves

Skynet would tend to disagree.

Re:automation is only one-way

[tantrum]

I thought that was exactly what was claimed to be the problem, that people are too slow to fix automated defences when they malfunction.

Re:automation is only one-way

[ultranova]

algorithms cannot bypass themselves

/blockquote>

Skynet would tend to disagree.

What do you mean ? Skynet functioned exactly within its design parameters: it detected America's enemies and executed them with the most efficient method at its disposal. It goes like this:

US is waging a War on Terror -> you're either with us or you're with the terrorists -> giving money or training to terrorists makes you an enemy of the US -> US gave money and training to many terrorist organizations during the Cold War -> US is an ally of the terrorists -> US is an enemy of US -> kaboom.

In other words, it's not a bug, it's a feature ;).

This already exists

[Bryansix]

When my company moved we had to get new IP addresses. This meant changing MX records and all of that fun. Anyways, the problem came with sending email out. It turns out that like a billion spam catched had caught email from the IP range and so it was not blocked. These various Spam Blocking Lists (or SBLs) are almost all automated. A few of them let you push a button and get removed. However some of them require manually emailing an explanation and still others try to extort money from you to speed up the unblocking process. We didn't even send any spam. The previous owners of the IP did.

Re:This already exists

[Anonymous Coward]

AIDS already exists, too. A frightening real disease which ought not be compared to issues of whatever internet posse comitatus happens to rain the occasional parade for those networks who voluntarily implement SBL, et al.

Re:This already exists

[Bryansix]

Our email suffered because other people implemented SBL. Also, nobody is comparing it to AIDS. The summary mistakenly made that analogy but the article used a different analogy.

Re:This already exists

[pclminion]

These various Spam Blocking Lists (or SBLs) are almost all automated. A few of them let you push a button and get removed. However some of them require manually emailing an explanation and still others try to extort money from you to speed up the unblocking process. We didn't even send any spam. The previous owners of the IP did.

If this isn't a strong argument that blacklisting systems are unethical, I don't know what is. Imagine being targeted by vigilantes because you bought a house which was previously occupied by a sex offender and so the addreess is listed on the local sex offender registry. That's essentially what's happening here.

There is no such thing as an "evil IP address" any more than there is an "evil house." These systems are technically, logically, as well as ethically flawed. Anybody who buys into blacklist-based technology is a reactionary and a bigot.

Re:This already exists

[Klaus_1250]

Blocklists are slowly adapting to this with temporary blocklists. But NEVER EVER accept a new IP-address/block without checking its history. I went through the same ordeal once, finding it really was next to impossible to convince blocklists that ownership had really changed and I wasn't a bad guy (the previous owner had moved ip-addresses, but remained with the same colocation provider which didn't help my case). Worst of all, the colocation provider wasn't helpful at all.

Re:This already exists

[minvaren]

The instant that a single local sex offender can assault one million people in an hour, I will agree with you.

Re:This already exists

[RazzleDazzle]

Well then you obviously are not on the receiving end of millions of spam emails every day that *COULD* have been rejected outright if only you'd been using an SBL. Or you have so much free time to delete all of the junk emails, in which case where do you work? I would like a job? The whole basis of your argument gives no explanation as to how block lists are flawed morally. Technically flawed, yes. Morally flawed, I'd say no. Why should I waste all of my time looking and and handling spam emails I never wanted, requested, or occasionally specifically asked to not to receive? Just so I can be morally superior to spammers?

Let's pretend I agree that SBL's are immoral, I'd gladly take the hit to my moral standing if it means the (even less moral) spammers can't get as much of their crap to my inbox.

No one sane has ever said that block lists are the ultimate solution for the fight against spam, it is a very useful and very effective supplement to other measures. If something better comes along, I'd gladly use it.

If you don't like block lists, don't use them.

Re:This already exists

[statemachine]

Every time I see these arguments against spam blacklists, I roll my eyes. On my mailserver, I've carefully selected blacklists that either periodically scan suspected hosts for open proxies or infections, or simply list based on a spam coming from that IP address. And in all cases, these selected blacklists allow quick delisting.

True, the blacklists have blocked some of a large e-mail provider's servers (because spam was indeed sent from those compromised servers), which has inconvenienced me, but at the same time, the IP addresses were delisted quickly, and only relisted again because the e-mail provider *did not clean up the servers*. Only when the servers were cleaned up did those IP addresses stop getting listed.

I use blacklists because I don't want to tie up resources with filtering, nor do I feel I should accept the bandwidth costs on my end. Blacklists aren't the only method I use, but all methods I do use end up dropping the connection, instead of accepting everything and sorting it out later, of which the latter is a very bad practice. Though I am a small guppy in a very large ocean, my server rejects 7 to 12 thousand connections a month, with maybe less than 5 e-mails a year ever being false-positives for spam. And today I get between 3 and 6 spams a day that slip through to my public, well-known e-mail address inboxes which have been around since '99.

Say what you will about blacklists, but they work, and they work well. I don't need to receive, store, and filter all that spam. If I did start up a filter, I'd still keep the blacklists since they would greatly reduce the load, and I have several years of logs and e-mails to back up that assertion.

Re:This already exists

[brass1]

If this isn't a strong argument that blacklisting systems are unethical, I don't know what is. It's a strong argument for changing providers more than anything else. The abuse department that found and killed the previous customer should have done a sweep of those IPs with all the usual places then get them removed. For professional abuse departments this is a matter of doing business, and is unfortunately part of what makes the Internet go 'round whether anyone likes it or not.

A black list is a list of domain or IPs the provider of the black list wishes to list. The provider of the list gets to decide who is listed, why they're listed and under what circumstances under which people get removed. They don't even have to give you any way to know you're on their list. Blacklists do not block mail. They're simply a list. It's a list of people that one party doesn't think other parties should accept mail from. It really nothing more than an opinion. There are of course bad lists and good lists. The fact is, the open market is pretty good at selecting the good ones and weeding out the bad ones.

The consumers of these lists, on the other hand, do have choices. One of them is to choose to not accept your mail for whatever reason they deem fit. Those people, whom you call, "vigilantes," the rest of us call Mail Server Administrators. We use tools such as RBLs, content filters and other other technologies to stop the deluge of bullshit into your mailbox. I will say that blocking any given piece of mail just because it shows up in one black list is probably asking to block mail someone wants. The system administrators run the system, they decide what mail comes in and what goes out. They have to work the tickets if it's broken for everyone or just the handful that got a spammy piece of mail blocked this week.

Anybody who buys into blacklist-based technology is a reactionary and a bigot. No, I'm a realist who knows from years of experience that they work with a minimum of side effects and do so far more efficiently than a lot of other less effective technologies.

Re:This already exists

[maxume]

If you think blacklisting is unethical, then you must think that ignoring something for any reason(or for no reason at all) is unethical. I doubt you actually believe this.

Re:This already exists

[Danny Rathjens]

That reminds me of that lady who had her house vandalized because she was a "paediatrician" because they thought it sounded too much like "paedophile". Some blacklists are based on having letters like "dsl" in your DNS PTR records. :)

Re:This already exists

[pclminion]

Well then you obviously are not on the receiving end of millions of spam emails every day that *COULD* have been rejected outright if only you'd been using an SBL. Or you have so much free time to delete all of the junk emails, in which case where do you work?

I use a Bayesian filter, perhaps you've heard of it? It filters about 300 messages a day. That's down, from about 3000 a day a year ago. Filter the content, not the source.

Why should I waste all of my time looking and and handling spam emails I never wanted, requested, or occasionally specifically asked to not to receive?

No idea. Why DO you? I don't.

If you don't like block lists, don't use them.

I was unable to email my own mother for over 3 months because her ISP uses RBL and my IP was in a banned block. So yes, I wasn't using it, but the recipient was, without her knowledge or even informed consent. The fact is, we don't GET a choice. We're at the mercy of rabid sysadmins.

Re:This already exists

[pclminion]

If you think blacklisting is unethical, then you must think that ignoring something for any reason(or for no reason at all) is unethical. I doubt you actually believe this.

Not an equivalent for comparison. It's not ME who chooses to ignore something. It's a piece of software on a server that I have no control over. My mom didn't have a choice when her ISP started blocking my emails. Except of course to change ISPs to one which has a sane policy. And I'm not switching hosting services just because my IP somehow made it into a blacklist. Believe me, I checked it out and could not ascertain just why in the hell my IP (actually the whole net block) was on the list. The hosting service is outstanding and has very proactive spam measures.

Some mail server administrator who thinks he's God decided that he should get to choose which mail gets delivered and which doesn't. That breaks a fundamental trust between customer and service provider. "We're going to block these mails -- if you don't like it, switch providers." Sounds like blackmail to me. Leveraging the very VICTIMS of spam, taking advantage of their ire, frustration, and helplessness to further your own political goals. It's slime at its lowest.

Being a sysadmin doesn't make you God. Maybe back when we were all 15 and swapping warez over 2400 BPS modems, the sysop was "God." Most of us have grown up since then.

Re:This already exists

[McDutchie]

If this isn't a strong argument that blacklisting systems are unethical, I don't know what is. Imagine being targeted by vigilantes because you bought a house which was previously occupied by a sex offender and so the addreess is listed on the local sex offender registry. That's essentially what's happening here.

If this isn't hysterical hyperbole, I don't know what is. What's happening is that he is having trouble getting a few emails delivered. No one is getting "targeted".

There is no such thing as an "evil IP address" any more than there is an "evil house."

There are, however, shitty neighbourhoods. If you live in a high crime area, don't expect to get pizza delivered. If you rent an IP address from a spammer-infested slumlord ISP, don't expect to get email delivered from there.

The Internet is a network based on voluntary collaboration. If you don't keep your net neighbourhood clean, the rest of the Internet will refuse to play with you, and rightly so. It's that simple.

These systems are technically, logically, as well as ethically flawed. Anybody who buys into blacklist-based technology is a reactionary and a bigot.

Wah wah wah! Grow up. You sound like a spammer.

Re:This already exists

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, even the non-automated blacklists from 10 years ago had the same problem. It took our little ISP over three months to get our name scrubbed from these lists.

Re:This already exists

[pclminion]

Wah wah wah! Grow up. You sound like a spammer.

A spammer who published a paper on automated classification of spam, and devised a neural network/information clustering technique which was shown to be even more effective than Bayesian filtering -- in fact, more effective than ANY other known content-based method at the time? Yeah, okay, chief. So tell me, what the hell have YOU been doing to combat the spam problem, aside from widesweeping, ill-advised, technically flawed, misanthropic methods?

Filter the content, not the physical source. We could beat the spammers by shutting down the whole damn Internet, but that's not a real solution. It's a solution for the simple-minded and the impatient. Who cares if a few percent of spam gets through? WE HAVE OUR FREEDOM BACK. Your attitude seems to be, "Who cares if we give up our free use of the Internet because of a few dickheads -- at least I don't have to deal with the inconvenience of spam messages."

I'm willing to put in the work to make an open, spam-free Internet a reality. How about you? Or would you prefer to just yank my network connection so you don't have to hear my "whining" any more?

Re:This already exists

[Technician]

Anybody who buys into blacklist-based technology is a reactionary and a bigot.

Or simply buried in spam so e-mail isn't functional. Blacklisting China, Amsterdam, and Russia lightened my load considerably.

The problem with blacklists is the re-assignment of an IP address does not clear up the black ball. There should be a way to have blacklists auto-check the MX record for new ownership.

Re:This already exists

[Dishevel]

AIDS isnt even all that bad anymore. You take some pills. They are also very close to a vaccine. TONS of money has been POURED into AIDS. Heart Disease is much more deadly and further from any cures. I am sick of people telling me to think about AIDS. AIDS is over funded and Under deadly. :)

Re:This already exists

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow down Mr. Entitled. Congrats on brandishing your nerdweiner for all the world to see, but that doesn't make your original comment any less retarded.

Re:This already exists

[ultranova]

Some mail server administrator who thinks he's God decided that he should get to choose which mail gets delivered and which doesn't.

Holy exaggeration, Batman ! Well, I guess animistic faiths could incorporate gods of e-mail servers for various domains. Sure would make an impressive title for your CV, too ;).

But seriously, in what way does deciding not to receive (not deliver; receive) an e-mail mean you've got delusions of grandieur ? And do I have such delusions if I put "no junk mail" sticker on my real-life mailbox, or my phone number in the "Do-not-call" list ?

"We're going to block these mails -- if you don't like it, switch providers." Sounds like blackmail to me.

Sounds like bad service to me. To make it blackmail, the alternative should be "pay us", not "switch providers".

Leveraging the very VICTIMS of spam, taking advantage of their ire, frustration, and helplessness to further your own political goals.

What political goals ?

Re:This already exists

[lena_10326]

The instant that a single local sex offender can assault one million people in an hour, I will agree with you.

A spam email is equivalent to getting molested or raped? Hmm. Your cerebral prioritization algorithm is broken.

Re:This already exists

[Anonymous Coward]

How to block a few million spams per day without breaking a sweat. See? You can do it without RBLs. In fact, the guy's opinion on RBLs is quite strong - and quite convincing.

Re:This already exists

[Fred_A]

AIDS isnt even all that bad anymore. You take some pills. Not that bad as in *if* you're in a rich country you can get a treatment that's quite uncomfortable and has lots of not very nice side effects and while it leaves you still alive (and therefore free to do science if you like), still leaves you with a depressed immune system which means you still have to take lots of silly precautions.
So while I suppose that people with AIDS are happy not to be dead, it's still not a very comfortable illness to have. Not to mention that there's apparently still a heavy social ostracism against sick people even though you have to try fairly hard to catch it from a carrier.

Most heart conditions are probably easier to live with.

Re:This already exists

[Fred_A]

If this isn't a strong argument that blacklisting systems are unethical, I don't know what is. Imagine being targeted by vigilantes because you bought a house which was previously occupied by a sex offender and so the addreess is listed on the local sex offender registry. That's essentially what's happening here. Except that on the network, whole subnets are written off because of one or two addresses.

One house shouldn't be equal to a whole block (class C) or a whole town (class B) even though it makes life easier for the RBL maintainers.

Re:This already exists

[RazzleDazzle]

I use a Bayesian filter, perhaps you've heard of it? It filters about 300 messages a day. That's down, from about 3000 a day a year ago. Filter the content, not the source.

Good for you. Bayesian filters work great for some scenarios, but they do not work well for everyone. Do you think companies like Yahoo, Gmail, MSN, etc can use Bayesian filters? They have to be trained by the end user which is not an easy task or even possible in some cases like where people outsource their anti-spam to other companies because they do not have the capabilities or resources to do it themselves.

Why should I waste all of my time looking and and handling spam emails I never wanted, requested, or occasionally specifically asked to not to receive?

No idea. Why DO you? I don't.

I don't do this either, I use multiple public SBL's, signature based, surbl, and a self tweaking and auto expiring local SBL. I do not have much spam getting to me. I then get a daily digest of all "spam" sent to me that shows me the subject and mailfrom of all emails the day before or at any time I can log into my "quarantine" and view, release, delete, or forward these "spam" from the quarantine.

If you don't like block lists, don't use them.

I was unable to email my own mother for over 3 months because her ISP uses RBL and my IP was in a banned block. So yes, I wasn't using it, but the recipient was, without her knowledge or even informed consent. The fact is, we don't GET a choice. We're at the mercy of rabid sysadmins.

You and your mom DO get a choice, use a mail service other than your ISP. Besides, if you think your general ISP is not using an SBL then you obviously are not in touch with reality. 99% of ISPs probably use SBLs. Deal with with or move.

Re:This already exists

[maxwell demon]

The instant that a single local sex offender can assault one million people in an hour, I will agree with you.

A spam email is equivalent to getting molested or raped? Hmm. Your cerebral prioritization algorithm is broken. It seems you don't at all care about how your computer feels when getting forcefully tons of spam mail inserted into the mail folder, you insensitive clod!

Re:This already exists

[pclminion]

I would not have even posted if I hadn't been accused of being a "spammer," which is the typical response when I criticize RBL. This happens so often that by default I give a pointer to our paper. The point is, there is no reason to give up our freedom on the Internet because of a few dickheads. I believe this fervently enough that I've done research work on the topic to try to improve the situation. Am I overly opinionated? Probably. But I see absolutely no reason why normal Internet users should be victimized by these systems when there are perfectly acceptable alternatives.

We could also cut down on terrorism by strip searching everybody the moment they step outside their front door. This is morally reprehensible to me, as is the prejudice inherent in RBL systems. The price we pay in a free society in return for NOT getting anal probes on a daily basis is that a few bad apples slip through. And the price we pay for fair, content-based spam filtering is that sometimes a few bad messages get through.

Trigger trippers

[ackthpt]

the systems in place to reverse erroneous lockdowns are manual and unresponsive.

Yep, almost as bad as trying to get set up with service in the first place.

I guess the way to foil these critters is to try to trip as many as possible. Then again, the intarweb mischief-makers will probably do just that.

Please stay on the line, your call is important to us.

Automatic Forgiveness in Autonomic Systems...

[nweaver]

For a lot of autonomic systems, you need the blocking, but a little automatic forgiveness goes a long way.

EG, in a scan detector, forgive 1 scan per minute/hour and eventually release the block. This saves a call to tech support, and papers over a lot of sins when building an automatic system.

Re:Automatic Forgiveness in Autonomic Systems...

[photon317]

I do this in all of my active defense systems for production sites. I tend to make the firewall rules reasonably aggressive at detecting anything that looks remotely like attack traffic (connections on ports that neither us or customers are ever supposed to use but do see attack traffic (22, 139, etc...), tcp flag combos common in stealth scanners, certain known exploit string matches on port 80 traffic, etc), but the offending IPs are only blacklisted for a few minutes at first, ramping up to perhaps half a day if they're persistent within the blacked-out time window. This is more than enough to deter most automated (and even a few manual) attackers, assuming you're not protecting super valuable data. Still, there's no excuse not to be proactively checking up on your defenses and making sure things are behaving well.

Re:Automatic Forgiveness in Autonomic Systems...

[jamesh]

I've implemented a similar but much simpler thing on a linux router using ipt_recent. It stops ftp/ssh scans very quickly. I have about 32 addresses in a /24 that aren't used and if hit will trigger this blocking behaviour. Ditto for a bunch of ports (1434, 445, etc).

What are you using to implement this?

same thing happens with p2p blocklists

[leuk_he]

p2p applications use peergaurdian or other ip filters by bluetack that increase in size, but getting removed form such a ip blocklist is hard.

Auto-immune != immuno-deficient

[ChameleonDave]

The summary title is stupid.

AIDS is not auto-immune; it is immuno-deficient. The FA doesn't mention AIDS. Try this.

Re:Auto-immune != immuno-deficient

[Raffaello]

Exactly. Summary should have said "Internet Lupus" or "Internet Multiple Sclerosis" etc.

Re:Auto-immune != immuno-deficient

[ColdWetDog]

It's kind of a dumb rant - automatic systems are cheap and fast, manual (meat space) systems are slow and expensive. If he is trying to make some analogy between the Internet and the Immune System, well, you can do it but it's pretty crude. The immune system in a human, for example, is a complex and delicate balance between acceptance and destruction.

There are many, many examples of problems when that balance is disrupted. AIDS on one hand when you don't have enough of an immune response, Lupus when your immune system is too jazzed up. Furthermore, the immune system is incredibly complex and has layers and layers of feedback systems, redundancies, control loops and things we really don't understand well. I suppose AIDS would be a Windows box hooked up to a cable modem. Not long for this world.... Lupus might be what Doctorow is complaining about - too much "immune" activity.

Unlike the Internet, the immune system has had millions of years to evolve to it's present state - and it is still hardly a perfect system. Perhaps some up and coming "Internet Immunologist" might start out with this course to take advantage of those millenniums of experiments

Or perhaps we should just chuck the immune system thing and try to come up with a car analogy.

Re:Auto-immune != immuno-deficient

[Anonymous Coward]

>Summary should have said "Internet Lupus"

It's never Internet Lupus.

Re:Auto-immune != immuno-deficient

[fm6]

Just to make your point a little clearer: "auto" here means "self" not "automatic". Auto-immune diseases are ones where the immune system attacks the very cells it's supposed to protect.

Re:Auto-immune != immuno-deficient

[gad_zuki!]

>It's kind of a dumb rant

What? Youre saying a science fiction author who has never worked with large scale networking has invalid opinions about network security and his proposed fix-all is questionable musings? Say it aint so!

Re:Auto-immune != immuno-deficient

[veganboyjosh]

Perhaps the car analogy the sibling post was talking about is in there somewhere...

Re:Auto-immune != immuno-deficient

[maxume]

Also, Cory Doctorow didn't found Boing Boing, Mark Frauenfelder did.

Re:Auto-immune != immuno-deficient

[arodland]

It's never Lupus.

Re:Auto-immune != immuno-deficient

[fm6]

In that sense, there is no auto-immunity. Slashdot is a U.S.-centric board.

Bunch of cash

[moogied]

I will wager a bunch of cash that he is selling a product that will fix whatever he says is broke.

Re:Bunch of cash

[NoMaster]

I will wager a bunch of cash that he is selling a product that will fix whatever he says is broke.

No, no - he's writing a story about it.

The hero is a neckbeard, it's set in a world where everything wants to be free, and the main part of the action takes place in Disneyland. Oddly and unbelievably, the author will not understand the ironic incongruity of that...

Re:Bunch of cash

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, you seem to be capable of independent thought and don't think all "geeks" are selfless information warriors.
Why do you have a slashdot account?

AIDS is not an auto immune disease

[Anonymous Coward]

AIDS is not an auto immune disease. He talks about when the immune system attacks normal, healthy cells, not when the immune system fails completely

Stupid slashdot editors.

Not AIDS

[supahdren]

Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but this article doesn't mention any comparison to "AIDS." This is good, because AIDS isn't an autoimmune disease. The article's comparison of evolving security responses to an autoimmune reaction is apt, but a comparison to AIDS/HIV wouldn't be.

Re:Not AIDS

[Hatta]

It's not lupus, it's never lupus.

Re:Not AIDS

[j14ast]

Brought to you by the House(MD) for president council.

Re:Not AIDS

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither. It's just a bad analogy. Makes you misunderstand the problem pretty quick.

Re:Not AIDS

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Lupus makes for a fine analogy. It's an autoimmune disease where the body's immune system attacks itself, causing multiple organ damage.

If you're looking for something analogous the layman can understand, how about autoimmune arthritis, where the body's immune system attacks itself and gives the person arthritis, similiar to a self-inflicted DOS attack?

Re:Not AIDS

[antibryce]

Maybe it's Cushing's?

Re:Not AIDS

[Joe Jay Bee]

Or cancer... sarcoidosis?

Re:Not AIDS

[DanielJosphXhan]

My wife went in for some tests the other day, and her doctor said, "You have a few signs of Lupus."

She came home and told me. I looked her straight in the eye and said, "It's never Lupus." We both watch the show, and she laughed her ass off.

Later it turned out House was right. So either laughter is the best medicine or it really isn't ever Lupus.

(Also a fun word to say! Say it: Lupus, Lupus, Lupus, Lupus... it sounds like a Microsoft MP3 player or something.)

Re:Not AIDS

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish people would stop using this quote. I know, it's trendy and funny to mention relevant occurrences from popular culture. But you're dealing with a disease that ruins lives; a little more understanding would be appreciated by those that suffer from Lupus.

I'm not usually one to jump all over the political correctness, but when you're dealing with a disease that afflicts over a million people people in this country alone, it's time to admit it pretty fucking frequently IS lupus. TV personalities be damned.

Re:Not AIDS

[Loke the Dog]

Is that you, Cameron?

Re:Not AIDS

[jpallan]

I could see this having a flamewar reaction with the AIDS research movement. Call me dense, but I doubt people actually suffering from HIV and AIDS really want their difficulties compared with NSA-type stuff.

Not AIDS

[mr100percent]

It wouldn't be internet AIDS. Wouldn't that be Internet Lupus?

hmm

[theMerovingian]

the systems in place to reverse erroneous lockdowns are manual and unresponsive

Anyone who is married knows how much of a dilemma this presents...

Guess we'll have to...

[oahazmatt]

Guess we'll have to line the tubes with latex.

Re:Guess we'll have to...

[Bryansix]

Don't you mean KY Lube?

Pardon my naivety

[zappepcs]

but if all that could be done successfully, wouldn't it already exist as a set of ruby on rails scripts?

Seriously, I believe that until processors/hardware works with the OS to sandbox applications correctly, there is no really effective way to sanitize the Internet, and there are some really good reasons for not doing so.

At least some malware uses the OS features to hide itself, and propagate itself. Much of the rest of it relies on users to initialize it locally. Tell me how that will automatically be removed from the internet. Try to eliminate all threats is the same whack-a-mole game as trying to stop file sharing outright. Sure, might theoretically be a good idea, but in practice there are some gaping huge holes in the process.

No matter how smart you make the software, the routers, or the Internet in general, there will be some finance guy that thinks he knows IT in a small company that allows his servers to get owned. Thanks to the 1000s like him, the rest of the internet will have to continue fighting the 'malware' forever. False positives aside, the task of eliminating security risks from an Internet where Win95 is still running is a bit more than daunting.

Re:Pardon my naivety

[Bryansix]

Couldn't Microsoft just release patches for Windows 95? I mean they released the buggy software so they should fix it.

principal/principle

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean: 'in principle'.

That's not AIDS

[Punto]

It's Lupus.

Re:That's not AIDS

[Anonymous Coward]

It's NEVER Lupus.

Also, internet's closed due to AIDS

Re:That's not AIDS

[jalefkowit]

No it isn't.

Re:That's not AIDS

[pclminion]

Foreman, you idiot!

Re:That's not AIDS

[Punto]

It's NEVER Lupus.

where is your god now?

I've had this experience

[kwerle]

I had a bad encounter with an RBL a few years back (late 90's, I think). I had installed some web proxy on my machine and opened it up so I could use it from outside my firewall. I never considered that it cold proxy to my machine itself. These were the bad middle days when packages could get away with shipping in not-quite-idiot-proof configuration. I later argued with the package maintainer that the proxy should disable local referrals by default. They didn't agree, and it wasn't my package.

Anyway. It turns out that spammers could blindly use my webproxy to push email to my local port 25 and send mail using it. Damn clever spammers. I figured it out after my email system croaked and I looked at the logs and mailq. (crap, 1000 spam messages in the outbox, originated on my system).

So I'd been a tool, and used, and it was my damn fault. I fixed it (uninstalled the proxy) and started to repair the damage.

One of the items of fallout was that the RBL lists had nailed my IP address as a spammer. Fair enough. But getting them to turn it off was a royal pain in the ass and took days - even though their notes described exactly how the spam was delivered through my system and it was easily verifiable that it was no longer an issue.

It left me pretty peeved, and I've never used an RBL since.

The pool is closed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Due to AIDS!

Re:The pool is closed!

[Anonymous Coward]

we'll require some serious /b/lackup on this one.

Re:The pool is closed!

[Anonymous Coward]

      hh                                  dd
sss  hh       oooo   oooo  pp pp         dd   aa aa
s     hhhhhh  oo  oo oo  oo ppp  pp   dddddd  aa aaa
sss  hh   hh oo  oo oo  oo pppppp   dd   dd aa  aaa
    s hh   hh  oooo   oooo  pp        dddddd  aaa aa
sss                        pp
           hh
ww      ww hh       oooo   oooo  pp pp
ww      ww hhhhhh  oo  oo oo  oo ppp  pp
ww ww ww  hh   hh oo  oo oo  oo pppppp
  ww  ww   hh   hh  oooo   oooo  pp
                                 pp     

Re:The pool is closed!

[Anonymous Coward]

nevar forgive

nevar forget

Whitelists and Blacklists

[Doc Ruby]

The solution to the complex access problems is, as usual, distributed social trust networks. But we're still so primitive that I can't even find a whitelist/blacklist plugin for my Evolution.

There probably is one, but it's hidden behind an opaque trust network of people who know about it, but who I don't know, though we have that SW relationship (need/have) in common. Let's see if the manual broadcast still works.

Cory's not a BB founder, nor is AIDS

[yourpusher]

anywhere near an appropriate analogy.

Re:Cory's not a BB founder, nor is AIDS

[Hal_Porter]

Apart from that though you have to admit the summary is quite well written.

Fortunately there is a cure

[Anonymous Coward]

Click here for the cure.

that's the second article i read today

[circletimessquare]

that had a misleading title, suggesting disease from internet content

"Lust, Caution" prompts virus, medical warnings

although this was quite the amusing bit:

"Most of the sexual maneuvers in 'Lust, Caution' are in abnormal body positions," the report quoted Yu Zao, a deputy director at a women's hospital in southern Guangdong province, as saying.

"Only women with comparatively flexible bodies that have gymnastics or yoga experience are able to perform them. For average people to blindly copy them could lead to unnecessary physical harm," Yu said.

ok, now i HAVE to see this movie

and if you'll excuse me, i have to go wash my hands. because i touched my keyboard. who knows what i will catch

Re:that's the second article i read today

[Eevee1]

You might get pregnant by not using protection while typing. So, who's the father?

Doctorow not a founder of BoingBoing

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how many times I've heard Doctorow say in interviews that he is not a founder of BoingBoing. Fraunfelder is the only founder still involved with BoingBoing (I think he is also the only current contributor who was around when BoingBoing was in print before it went electronic).

Not a BB founder

[Anonymous Coward]

Boing Boing was founded by Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair. Small detail, but hey, who needs accuracy in a headline?

Credit card lockdown

[pclminion]

My wife and I drove over three hours to a different state to buy furniture. On the way, we stopped at a gas station and bought gas. Apparently, our credit union doesn't believe in such things as traveling from state to state, and flagged this is a suspicious transaction. Nevermind that we go to this neighboring state regularly and their "system" has never seen this as unusual. Of course, the card was silently suspended. This has happened a few times in the past, but we'd always received a phone call within minutes of it happening. No such call, so we remained oblivious and continued on.

Proceeded to drive to our destination, spent a few MORE hours picking out furniture, went to pay, and... Whoops. Luckily I managed to dig out a credit card from the depths of my wallet that I'd forgotten about, and which still worked, luckily. But it easily could have been a completely wasted day.

Of course, calling the credit union about it didn't help. They aren't open on the weekends. They can shut your account down kid, but they won't turn it back on again.

Imagine that. People occasionally drive into a neighboring state and... buy gas on the way! If that's not suspicious, what the hell is, right?

Re:Credit card lockdown

[gclef]

Actually, it's very suspicious to the credit card companies.

When a card is stolen, the thief will often follow a predictable pattern: a small, relatively anonymous purchase (like gas), to confirm that the card works, followed shortly by a large transaction (like, in your case, furniture). Gas stations are the perfect place for that first transaction: if the card is cancelled, no one's at the pump to call the card company or rat them out.

When the credit card companies see transactions that fit that pattern, they'll nuke the card first & ask questions later. (After all, your maximum liability is $50, but the merchant and CC bank then have to fight out who eats the rest of the loss if the card's stolen.)

Sucks that you got caught in it, but there is a logical reason why they did it.

Re:Credit card lockdown

[SuperBanana]

Of course, calling the credit union about it didn't help. They aren't open on the weekends. They can shut your account down kid, but they won't turn it back on again.

You don't call your credit union. You call the credit card company.

I belong to a credit union too, and I have a CC issued by my credit union. I bought an expensive piece of electronics, first major purchase on the card. On a Sunday afternoon, no less. That went through...but 30 minutes later, another transaction was declined. The credit card company acted on the unusual behavior and stopped the card and called me. I missed the call, but saw it when I went to call the 800 number on the back of my card with my cell phone.

Your credit union doesn't do jack shit except issue the card, accept payments if you wish, and show you balance/activity. Everything is outsourced to the holding bank or the credit card company itself. The holding bank's hotline is open 24x7x365...you just have to know the right place to call. After I confirmed I had made the purchase, the rep said "you're all set", and I said "how long until it's active?" "Immediately." I motioned to the cashier, and sure enough, it went through.

If it truly is the case that your card doesn't have a 24x7 800 number, complain to your credit union and see if they do anything. If not- get a CC that does have a 24x7 number. Vote with your wallet, chief.

Re:Credit card lockdown

[elBart0]

Time to use another bank. There's no reason to use a bank or credit union that treats its customers so poorly.

Welcome to racial profiling

[DysenteryInTheRanks]

He mentions having his debit card cut off every time he leaves the country; the same thing happened to me.

Ater specifically notifying B of A I was going to France, and asking them to raise the limit, because I would be withdrawing a lot of cash, my card was suspended.

Suspiciously, someone was withdrawing a lot of cash. In France.

This is basically the price we pay for weak law enforcement. There are laws against spam, and phishing, but no money to prosecute, so we end up with flawed automated systems.

There are laws against credit card fraud, but it's too expensive to really stop, especially abroad, so we end up with flawed automated systems.

There were all kinds of HUGE clues before the Sept. 11 attacks, but actually reforming the bureaucracy to catch those kinds of clues is too hard, so we have No Fly lists that trap innocent people. Basically a flawed, automated system.

And now it's just assumed that law enforcement will be weak and collectively incompetent, so there's this groundswell of acceptance for racial profiling, as though focusing on arabs (or blacks, latinos and whatnot, depending on the context and crime you're trying to stop) will make us safer -- rather than less safe, since while you're looking for the [arab/black/latino] guy on suspicion of [terrorism/theft/illegal immigration], someone who doesn't fit the stereotype walks right under your nose.

Re:Welcome to racial profiling

[Kazrath]

You know everyone wants profiling to be wrong but the problem is that it has better odds of being correct than a coin flip. Different ethnic groups are drawn to different things. Maybe it is genetic or social it does not really matter. The reason they profile is because it is accurate enough. Think of it in computer terms for a second. If you walk into a server farm and its room tempature or hotter and your troubleshooting an issue with server randomly rebooting what is most likely the first thing your going to check? Maybe lower the tempeture of the room because over heating would be the most likely cause. But lets say by happenstance it turns out that all the failing server are indirectly using the same wall outlet and a short in it was the cause of the issue. Profiling is the obvious and most likely answer but it is not always the right answer.

Re:Welcome to racial profiling

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason they profile is because it is accurate enough.

No. Racial profiling is stochastically better than nothing, but not accurate enough. Racial profiling in particular causes feedback loops, so while it does protect you now, it makes the problem worse in the long run.

Re:Welcome to racial profiling

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Racial profiling in particular causes feedback loops, so while it does protect you now, it makes the problem worse in the long run.

What, the arabs will start marrying white people to breed a new generation of super-terrorists?

More like metapHorrible

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

AIDS already exists, too. A frightening real disease which ought not be compared to issues of whatever internet posse comitatus happens to rain the occasional parade for those networks who voluntarily implement SBL, et al.

Oh, don't be such a comparison Nazi!

Waiting for Total Collapse

[rueger]

Sigh, neither Doctorow's article nor the bizarre summary offer much hope. He is right on some points though.

More and more it is left to the end user or consumer to battle their way though e-mail and voice systems to undo the damage inflicted by automated systems. To add insult to injury it seems that the blame for these problems is always placed on the customer, not on bad system design. I guess that this is all part of the "Leave you bag at the door" attitude that assumes that every customer is a shoplifter.

I'd say that the bigger threat is the likely collapse of the whole e-mail system. When will things just stop working? When spam accounts for 95% of e-mail? 99.9%? I'd like to hear about people that are developing a replacement for e-mail technology that just doesn't work any more.

Simple rule

[pclminion]

It should be a simple rule, really: Do not automatically disable anything that can't be automatically re-enabled. Two way street.

A Simple Well Thought Out Solution

[cybereal]

I'll simply get my HERF gun and this time things will not end badly!

(If you think this is OT, you need to read more Doctorow)

Cory's A Cool Guy And All But...

[FrankDrebin]

...he is not *the founder* of Boing Boing. That title goes to Mark Frauenfelder. Cory is a co-editor.

The Internet is closed...

[jblake]

...due to AIDS.

Stop saying lupus

[Thinboy00]

Please stop. It's annoying and redundant and somehow not rated as such (?).

The internet is no longer a series of tubes.

[Trespass]

It's now a pool- and it's closed.

What?

[Nonillion]

"malware, spamigation bots, and other network nasties"

WTF are these terms you are referring to? I run Linux and Unix and I'm unfamiliar with "malware" and "spamigation bots". Are these Windows applications?

Just asking :P

AC Post is from Family Guy!

[Z34107]

Since when is Family Guy "off-topic"?

Oh, wait, that's the entire premise behind most of their humor, isn't it?

Re:AC Post is from Family Guy!

[ThePengwin]

"yeah about quarter past 5"

Re:AC Post is from Family Guy!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is worse than that time I...

Blacklists

[Z34107]

There is no such thing as an "evil IP address" any more than there is an "evil house." These systems are technically, logically, as well as ethically flawed. Anybody who buys into blacklist-based technology is a reactionary and a bigot.

And you're a poopy-head!

If you're getting hammered with DoS attacks, spam, interweb herpaids or whatever TFA is about, you block the source. Blocking an IP address has nothing to do with some irrational fear of 32-bit numbers - it blocks the person using that number from destroying your network.

I hope you don't use a firewall or have a router, you bigot.

Re:Blacklists

[s7uar7]

Fine, block it for the duration of the attack, but don't keep it permanently on the list. Most spam and DoS attacks originate from hijacked PCs on dynamic IP addresses, so you're not only blocking the PC that's been hijacked, but also the guy who happens to get that IP address next, and the one after, and the one after that, etc, etc.

Re:Blacklists

[mlts]

That is definitely the best compromise. It doesn't take much to block immediately, but have a timeout on IP addresses which are blocked, so after a certain time (hours/days for DoS attacks, weeks/months for repeat spam addresses) they are delisted. Perhaps weight the algorithm as well, so if an IP range keeps triggering the blacklist code, it is blacklisted for a longer and longer time, although the time is always finite.

Re:Blacklists

[Z34107]

Blame the man who let his PC get infected; not the poor server op who has to deal with the attacks.

Besides, I don't know of any systems that keep individual IPs permanently blocked; the perma-bans seem reserved for troubled subnets. Very rarely does an entire network change hands; and TFA is complaining not about permanence, but that manual response is "too slow."

Re:Blacklists

[pclminion]

If you're getting hammered with DoS attacks, spam, interweb herpaids or whatever TFA is about, you block the source. Blocking an IP address has nothing to do with some irrational fear of 32-bit numbers - it blocks the person using that number from destroying your network.

Key point being the word "your" in "your network." Do whatever the hell you want on your own network. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about ISPs who take it upon themselves to filter the email to their own users based on criteria the users have no say over and probably zero knowledge of. Yes, it's a free market, blah blah blah. Let's see how you like changing providers every couple of months because they start using RBL. I take it you've never been on the losing end of an RBL -- I have. I couldn't email several important people because their ISPs started using various RBLs. So I'm in the same net block with a thousand other people, one of whom is maybe a spammer, therefore *I* have to change providers? Fuck you very much.

Re:Blacklists

[statemachine]

I have. I couldn't email several important people because their ISPs started using various RBLs.

I've been in your shoes with large e-mail service providers. One in particular (let's call it Company Y) treated my e-mail in each of the following ways over the course of a year: spam box (slightly tolerable), blackhole (never got delivered), and just plain rejected at the MTA level. I made an effort to contact them about whitelisting my domain (as I was not on any known blacklist), but it seemed to fall on deaf ears. However, just recently, I mistakenly used a person's address at Company Y, and it actually landed in the non-spam inbox.

Maybe a few things (in aggregate with other people) caused the problem to be solved:
1) I contacted Company Y and tried not to be an ass.
2) I started directing my friends and family to use the competitor (let's call it Company G), as I wasn't having any problems there. My friends and family listened to me (or at least considered it) because I gave a reasoned explanation, and I tried not to be an ass.
3) I mentioned my problem to an employee (friend of a friend) at Company Y (although this employee did not work with e-mail), gave a reasoned explanation, and I tried not to be an ass. Who knows if any water cooler talk got to the right person.. but it couldn't hurt to try.

Over the years, I've had my domains hosted on various ISPs, but in each case, I've made sure that I was allowed to have a server. In the few cases I wasn't, I had the server hosted elsewhere. I'm not saying you're running a mail server where you're not supposed to (I have no idea), but e-mail coming from a dynamic IP address that is allocated to a provider that prohibits servers is just asking to be flat-out rejected. I see too many attempts from dial-up and home cable providers with obviously bogus sender envelope information to know that this general categorization holds true. If you have a provider that allows e-mail servers, and you're still having problems with certain ISPs/e-mail service providers, and you're sure you're not on any blacklist (try http://www.dnsstuff.com/ ), then try contacting the ISP like I mentioned above. If the ISP is not willing to help you, there are other e-mail provider services you could recommend to your friends and relatives.

I could go on and on, but it boils down to trying everything you think is possible before you give up. What are the particulars of your domain?

Re:Blacklists

[oglueck]

hijacked PCs on dynamic IP addresses

You can safely block those for quite long. Those IP ranges must not send email directly, ever. They must relay through their ISP's smarthost. Even if they are running their own MTA. It doesn't matter if the current user of that IP spams or not.

Re:Blacklists

[oglueck]

I guess you mean permanent null-routing of the DROP list for instance. Should be done on your ISP's router.

Re:Blacklists

[orangesquid]

What RFCs say that, and does it just apply to dynamic addresses, or also to having a static IP but being just a common customer of an ISP? Or, is it based on who handles the reverse lookup or routing for an address?
For a lot of broadband, dynamic lease times are a year or longer, and I would argue that, on the Internet (where an ISP's standard mail servers might be replaced with newer machines that occupy different IP addresses once or twice a year), a year is a semi-permanent amount of time...

If I want to run my own mailserver (maybe my ISP's doesn't have features that I want, or maybe I want the experience of running a mailserver myself so that I can put it on my resume), and my machine has a permanent connection and (nearly) permanent address, what's wrong with that?

I've gotten on spam blacklists because a previous owner of an IP (even a designated static IP address) had somehow been implicated in spam three years prior... and some blacklists have a "we'll take you off when we get around to it if we think you've fixed the problem, so don't contact us, because not only will we ignore you, but we'll purposely wait even longer to consider you for removal." Not to mention blacklists that require you to donate money to "charity" to be removed (extortion, anyone?), even when you can demonstrate (for example) that the blacklist was in error to block you to begin with.

Now, graylisting is interesting, but, my maillog fills with errors, mail takes forever to reach its recipient, and my inbox fills with nearly-useless and somewhat-incorrect bounce messages. True, once your mailserver is OK'd, e-mail goes normally for that destination system, but, unless you send e-mail to that destination system fairly often, you'll lose your "OK" status. Plus, unless you only send e-mail to the same people all the time (i.e., you never send e-mail to random, new people: for example, writing them feedback regarding their websites or private replies to usenet posts or mailing list members), you'll constantly have to go through the graylisting process. If almost everybody in the world was on a small handful of huge ISPs (like having an Internet built from a bunch of AOLs, I guess?), graylisting would rarely be noticeable, but, the Internet shouldn't have that kind of constraint on its mailing system... what ever happened to heterogeneous systems and the *inter*-connection of many small networks (hence "inter-net"), not just a few huge ISPs?

Re:Blacklists

[oglueck]

I don't know if there is an RFC that mandates a static address for an MTA. But in current practice an MTA with a dynamic address is considered "rogue" by recieving MTAs. On a dynamic address you will also have a hard time to get a proper reverse DNS entry. If you want to run your own MTA, get a static address with proper reverse DNS entries. You can moan that your setup doesn't violate any RFC, but nobody will listen. SMTP was invented before SPAM. So don't be surprised that it doesn't work the same as 20 years ago.

Re:Blacklists

[Just Some Guy]

I'm talking about ISPs who take it upon themselves to filter the email to their own users based on criteria the users have no say over and probably zero knowledge of.

My favorite related personal anecdote:

My ISP acquired some new netblocks and was migrating customers into them. When they moved my /28 and I had problems, I tried to email them but it bounced: my new netblock was on a RBL that their server used to reject messages.

One quick phone call and all was resolved, but it was annoying (and amusing) for a day or two.

BTW, there are two ISPs in my city and this was the good one. My alternatives for getting "better" access consisted solely of moving to another town. My wife was less willing to consider the option than I might have been.

Re:that's nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not even real AIDS, it's a shitty open source knockoff. There isn't even a memorial quilt if you die of OpenAIDS, just a diaper.

Boing Boing Founder?

[Anonymous Coward]

The founder of Boing Boing is Mark Frauenfelder, with Cory as a co-editor.

it's more like allergies

[netsavior]

I think it's silly to force a biological metaphor but if you have to:
Allergic reactions are where your body identifies foreign or even native substances as harmful and treats them with hostillity (like by making your eyes water and your nose run to flush them out) This is an immune over-reaction, which is what the article is talking about.

AIDS would be more like the many many viruses that seek to shut down common anti-virus programs. But of course, AIDS is more scary and sensational than histamine

Non-credible source

[sakusha]

I fail to see how anyone could take that rant seriously. I fail to see how anyone could take seriously any technical argument from Cory, who is well known to be a high-school dropout who never produced a line of code in his life.

Cory's specialty is making mountains out of molehills. He whines that he got kicked off his hotel network after playing an online game that taxed their shared resources, and from that he makes sweeping generalizations about overall Internet security. Excuse me if I completely disregard his political tirade, and only consider technical arguments by network security professionals.

Re:Non-credible source

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Cory's speciality is promoting Cory.

Re:Non-credible source

[sakusha]

Right, like I said, making mountains out of molehills.

need safe browsing education

[wardk]

stop the impending pandemic

no more windows, no more ie

The Upgrade that Wasn't

[beadfulthings]

If this isn't a strong argument that blacklisting systems are unethical, I don't know what is. Imagine being targeted by vigilantes because you bought a house which was previously occupied by a sex offender and so the addreess is listed on the local sex offender registry. That's essentially what's happening here.

Yeah, they're unethical and sleazy, and yeah, I held out for as long as I could, but I'm only one person. I'm part of a small group of like-minded business people, and when we got fed up with "hosting providers," we arranged to share the cost of a "semi managed" Linux/Apache Web server. For my past sins (which involved a lot of servers, none of them running Linux) and for a bit of extra cash, I get to manage the damned thing. I watched in despair as more and more resources, and more and more time, became allocated to processing the mail. Peoples' mailboxes filled up so regularly that it was taking me more human-time to deal with the mess than was worth it to me. Yes, I had qualms, and yes, I gave it some thought. But on the morning when the previous night's backups didn't run til 9:30 a.m., I went in and changed my rules

The result has been six weeks (so far) of relative peace and quiet. The torrent has slowed to a trickle, easily and quickly managed. All those mundane little necessities like the backups are now proceeding when I set them up to proceed. The mail queue is always caught up. The untrained among us are now better able to deal with their own mailboxes. Best of all, the server has plenty of horsepower for now and the foreseeable future. I actually thought we might have to upgrade it. Think of that: Having to upgrade one's server so that it can cope with more and more unwanted, unrequested junk. I'm not willing to pay for that, and I doubt anybody else is, either.

AIDS?

[Pendersempai]

Only if we get to call a tiered internet "Internet racism."

Spam is email that forces itself upon me -- that can be "Internet rape."

What Comcast is doing to bittorrent traffic: "Internet genocide."

And the projected brownouts as described by that other article on the front page right now: "Internet Alzheimer's."

These attention-grabbing headlines are so accurate and informative!

Glad someone spotted this

[mutube]

AIDS = ACQUIRED Immune Deficiency Syndrome. That is the immune system gets knackered by the virus and packs in.

Auto-immune means that the body's immune system starts to attack itself, a condition which is largely incompatible with the one mentioned. AIDS deals with the destruction of the immune system by outside causes (whatever they may be). Autoimmune diseases cover the body's own immune system going haywire and destroying the body.

Analogy: AIDS is a demolition crew, Auto-immune is "Extreme Makover: Home Improvement" where the jacuzzi ends up cooking the family.

Re:Glad someone spotted this

[Creepy Crawler]

I love that analogy!

mmmMMMMMMMmmmm cooked long pig.

mod parent 'overrated.'

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you blogging in my slashdot window?

Strictly speaking

[chubbchubbs]

Autoimmune diseases arise from an overactive immune response of the body against substances and tissues normally present in the body. while AIDS destroys the immune system. it's a wrong analogy.

Blacklist timeouts

[CustomDesigned]

I keep IP blacklists and domain blacklists. IPs are blacklisted for 7 days. I experimented with various settings, measuring the diminishing returns (in saved bandwidth) from keeping them blacklisted longer and longer. 7 days is pretty optimal with about 500000 IPs blacklisted at any one time. This keeps spam bandwidth down to a continuous 100Kbps (400000 messages / day - for a one user domain!). Domains are auto-blacklisted based on reputation: total spams/total hams over the last 1024 messages. Reputation decays with time, so that a domain that finally purges their 'bot can send mail again in a week or so. Manually blacklisted domains are permanent, but are manually reviewed every year. There are some domain names that only people I don't want to hear from would buy.

The software is pymilter.

Re:Blacklist timeouts

[mlts]

That is excellent information. It is sort of a guessing game on how long to set a blacklist period. Too short, and you will get hit multiple times by the same perps. Too long, and it hurts someone if the IP block or domain changes hands.

What might be an idea, although this is abusable, would be some way of having a site collect info from others. Say domains A, B, and C are getting hit from the same IP range and blacklist it. They communicate that to some server, so domain D and E would either blacklist or use tarpits/QoS or other precautionary measures until their spam/DoS filters get triggered.

Re:Blacklist timeouts

[CustomDesigned]

What might be an idea, although this is abusable, would be some way of having a site collect info from others. Say domains A, B, and C are getting hit from the same IP range and blacklist it. They communicate that to some server, so domain D and E would either blacklist or use tarpits/QoS or other precautionary measures until their spam/DoS filters get triggered. I do this for domains using the GOSSiP protocol as implemented by pygossip. Each MTA consults a gossip server for reputation, and provides spam/ham feedback on specific messages. The gossip server maintains its own reputation database, and also queries peers for their opinion of a domain, and combines scores to get a reputation and a confidence.

Keep Your Tubes AIDS-free

[sanman2]

We have to keep the AIDS out of the tubes that are the internet

Re:Keep Your Tubes AIDS-free

[jo42]

Gack!!!

Some idjits, that should know better, used them "Internet tubes" in a diagram: clicky here be.

Where I come from, we call them "pipes" because "pipes" are always bigger than mere "tubes".

WTF is *A VIDEO GAME* doing a portscan for???

[knorthern knight]

No sympathy here. Cory, you should be yelling and screaming at the fuckwit of a video-game programmer that programmed the video-game to run a port-scan of the local network. How is the admin supposed to tell an "evil port scan" apart from a "benign port scan"? Btw, don't walk into a bank wearing a mask. A teller will push the button that silently alerts the local police station, and you'll spend the next 24 hours trying to raise bail.

If it quacks like a duck
and it flies like a duck
it's damn well going to be shot at each time it flies past a duck hunter.

Too much Boing Boing...

[Nyktos]

"Boing Boing" with out a "proper protection" with random "internet friends" could snag you a nice case of the clam, clap, or HIV/AIDS.

This guy must have not been paying attention in sex ed class if he is just now realizing this.

Not founder, not AIDS, otherwise, w00t!

[mouthbeef]

Hey there -- I wrote the FA, and for the record:

* I didn't found Boing Boing -- I co-edit it with Mark Frauenfelder (who *did* found it, along with Carla Sinclair), Xeni Jardin and David Pescovitz

* I didn't use the word AIDS in the article, and I don't think that this is comparable to AIDS; I used "autoimmune disorder," as in "allergy" or even "lupus" -- that is, any time when the systems that are supposed to protect you end up attacking you

Otherwise, many w00ts for this making it to the /. front door!

Virus analogy

[marcovje]

Well, one of the less nice properties (and then I'm making an understatement) is that it is euh, viral and contagious.

So this analogy is a bit overdone I guess.

Great, Internet AIDS

[Anonymous Coward]

All of a sudden my internet herpes isn't looking so bad. I just have to remember that I'm not just visiting Slashdot, I'm visiting anyone who's visited Slashdot... and anyone THEY'VE visited...

Okay, other side of the story

[SmallFurryCreature]

Didn't happen to me, I was just a witness. I was at a police station to sign a statement regarding an attempted burglary the night before, they asked me to wait as they had to deal with a woman who was a bit upset. Privacy? Not when you are so loud you are overpowering my iPod.

Her story? Money had been withdrawn from her debit account (Postbank for dutch readers) and she wanted to report it, she had already contacted the bank and been told the money had been widthdrawn from spain, this was in the summer and spain is a popular destination, and she was told she had to report it to start the process.

The real problem? The cop made the mistake of informing her that while she would most likely get her money back, it would take weeks to sort it out, she didn't have weeks, that money was the money she had to pay the bills with and buy food. It was the only money she had.

If only the bank had looked at the transaction a little more closely, a person on a low income suddenly going to spain and withdrawing all their money. If that is not suspicious, what the hell is.

Just ask yourselve what your reaction would have been if it had been a thief who made that transaction. Would you then have been glad the bank blocked it OR would you have enjoyed trying to prove that it wasn't you.

more like diabetes

[Andreas Schaefer]

seems to me the more appropriate analogy would be internet diabetes.

'Internet autoimmune disorder' -- where the network defenses designed to block network attacks are automated and instantaneous, but the systems in place to reverse erroneous lockdowns are manual and unresponsive.

also an autoimmune disorder, where the network defenses designed to block network attacks are either manipulated so they won't work or in a more severe condition they are abused to do the exact opposite.

in other news...

[quickpick]

Trojan.com has announced it is entering the software market with their new product e-prophylactics. The marketing slogan is: "Protecting your tool in and out of the pool." Evolve Today!

Allergic reaction

[Kelson]

Yeah, I would've compared it to an allergy, in which the immune system starts fighting off an otherwise harmless substance as if it were a foreign invader... and the response ends up being worse than the "attack" would have been.

It's not AIDS, it's Multiple Sclerosis

[Anonymous Coward]

AIDS is the wrong metaphor to use here. AIDS attacks the immune system and makes it vulnerable to opportunistic infections, more like a worm that shuts down your anti-virus and anti-malware applications. Doctorow is talking about a hyperaggressive autoimmune response that attacks and bogs down the organism it's supposed to protect. Ergo, the title should reference a disorder like MS or Lupus erythmatosus.

Oh Gawrsh

[Anonymous Coward]

For the love of god will slashdot please stop volunteering to be a cock-holster for cory doctorows psuedo-intellectual penis?

He's a sometimes amusing blogger and half-cocked sci fi writer.

I'll listen to what he has to say on this when he's actually written some code.