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Google Mail Servers Enable Backscatter Spam
Mike Morris writes "Google email servers are responsible for a large volume of backscatter spam. No recipient validation is being performed for the domains googlegroups.com and blogger.com — possibly for other Google domains as well, but these two have been confirmed. (You can test this by sending an email to a bogus address in either of the domains; you'll quickly get a Google-generated bounce message.) Consequently spammers are able to launch dictionary attacks against these domains using forged envelope sender addresses. The owners of these forged addresses are then inundated with the bounce messages generated by the Google mail servers. The proper behavior would be for the mail servers to reject email traffic to non-existent users during the initial SMTP transaction. Attempts at contacting them via abuse@google.com and postmaster@google.com have gone unanswered for quite some time. Only automated responses are received which say Google isn't doing anything wrong."
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*goes change his gmail password*
Seriously though, there's something else that bothers me about gmail (not the only one to do it): that apparently anyone can get your contact list if they have your address.
Ever happened to you? I was signing up on a music website with a gmail address, and then they asked me if I wanted to send invites to all my contacts, which magicaly appeared on their page. Even if it is apparently a common practice, I find it very disturbing.
Don't take my posts literally; it's just code to control my botnet.
They are getting tagged with the moniker "the new evil".
I wonder how much of this has to do with the Microsoft to Google employee migration bringing the corporate culture with the people?
Work bio at MMWD
forged from: abuse@[domain]
to: bogus@[domain]
You have issues.
If they have back scatter, they get it. If they don't have back scatter, they don't.
Ummm, how about the only behavior
It never ceases to amaze me how some mail server administrators setup policies on their networks. If you are running a mail server you are THE POSTMASTER. If you don't know where it should go, or who it is supposed to be going to, how can you accept it?
Refusing email and stopping the transaction when you do not control the domain, service the domain, or even know the mailbox user is about as obvious a policy as not relaying for domains outside of your control.
If it is an honest mistake on the part of the sending server, acting as an agent for the user, then a simple message informing the sender that the account does not exist is a trivial matter.
To do anything else just amazes me.
Didn't anyone notice that Gmail is still in beta?
FWIW, I use Google Apps to host my e-mail, and I have found Google to have horrible support.
Instead of fixing the problem, they'll just point you to a loosely moderated Google Groups newsgroup for Google apps, and you'll rarely receive a response, let alone a workable fix for an issue.
Do no evil? Or do nothing at all?
Brent Jones
We're writing to let you know that the group that you tried to contact (example12345) doesn't exist. There are a few possible reasons why this happened:
* You might have spelled or formatted the group name incorrectly.
* The owner of the group removed this group, so there's nobody there to contact.
If you have questions about this or any other group, please visit the Google Groups Help Center at http://groups.google.com/support.
Thanks, and we hope you'll continue to enjoy Google Groups.
The Google Groups Team
In other words, while this causes backscatter, this is not an avenue for "backscatter spam", since Google isn't delivering the contents of arbitrary messages to arbitrary users.
It sounds like the submitter wants to blow this out of proportion by equating general backscatter (which nearly all mailing list managers on the Internet generate with their "confirmation" messages) with backscatter spam.
http://outcampaign.org/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Basically Gmail is losing value for all of us as it becomes spam
soaked. Even their filtering is having troubles with false positives
and false negatives--and the spam is just increasing. Therefore I
think Google should act more aggressively to drive the spammers away
from Gmail.
My latest anti-spam idea is a SuperReport option. (Kind of like
SpamCop, but not so lazy.) If you click on the SuperReport option,
Gmail would explode the spam and try to analyze it for you to help go
after the spammers more aggressively. Here is one approach to
implementing it:
The first pass analysis would be a low-cost quickie that would also
act like a kind of CAPTCHA. This would just be an automated pass
looking for obvious patterns like email addresses and URLs. The email
would then be exploded and shown to the person making the report (=
the targeted recipient of the spam AKA victim). The thoughtful
responses for the second pass would guide the system in going after
the spammers--making Gmail a *VERY* hostile environment for spammers
to the point that they would stop spamming Gmail.
For example, if the first pass analysis finds an email address in the
header, the exploded options might be "Obvious fake, ignore",
"Plausible fake used to improve delivery", "Apparently valid drop
address for replies", "Possible Joe job", and "Other". (Of course
there should be pop-up explanations for help, which would be easy if
it's done as a radio button. Also, Google always needs to allow for
"Other" because the spammers are so damn innovative. In the "Other"
case, the second pass should call for an explanation of why it is
"Other".)
If the first pass analysis finds a URL, the exploded options should be
things like "Drugs", "Stock scam", "Software piracy", "Loan scam",
"419 scam", "Prostitution", "Fake merchandise", "Reputation theft",
"Possible Joe job", and "Other". I think URLs should include a second
radio button for "Registered Domain" (default), "Redirection",
"Possible redirection", "Dynamic DNS routing", and "Other". (Or
perhaps that would be another second-pass option?)
If the first pass finds an email address in the body, the exploded
options should include things like "Fake opt-out for address
harvester", "419 reply path", "Joe job", and "Other".
At the bottom of the expanded first pass analysis there should be some
general options about the kind of spam and suggested countermeasures,
and the submit SuperReport button. This would trigger the heavier
second pass where Gmail's system would take these detailed results of
the human analysis of the spam and use them to really go after the
spammers in a more serious way. Some of the second pass stuff should
come back to the person who received the spam for confirmation of the
suggested countermeasures.
Going beyond that? I think Gmail should also rate the spam reporters
on their spam-fighting skills, and figure out how smart they are when
they are analyzing the spam. I want to earn a "Spam Fighter First
Class" merit badge!
If you agree with these ideas--or have better ones, I suggest you try
to call them to Google's attention. Google still seems to be an
innovative and responsive company--and they claim they want to fight
evil, too. More so if many people write to them? (I even think they
recently implemented one of my suggestions to improve the Groups...
However, it doesn't matter who gets credit--what matters is destroying
the spammers.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, mail to an unknown recipient should be rejected with a 550 code during the initial SMTP dialogue. But not only that - lots of people believe that *any* message you don't intend to deliver should be rejected during the SMTP dialogue. The current fashion is to say "250 OK" and then silently delete the message later, which is wrong.
I hate to toot my own horn here, but I wrote tarmail with this express purpose in mind (among others). GPLed and everything. Messages that you won't accept get rejected during the SMTP dialogue.
If you don't like my MTA, then please feel free to mod this down so that others won't be needlessly bothered. But I really to believe that Tarmail is the right answer to this specific problem. Thank you for your time.
Don't worry. GoogleBackscatter is currently in Beta. When it goes into production backscatter will be even better!
Use POP3 for all your email. That way no website can ever get access to your contacts or personal data.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
There are three possibilities for email to non-existent addresses: Silent drop, initial bounce and delayed notification. All have problems.
If the sender address is legitimate, but a relay is in the transmission chain, you have only bad choices: Silent drop may cause problems for legitimate emails. Initial bounce causes the observed problem, once removed and with real-time characteristics. The observed delayed notification behavior at least has the advantage that you can control the rate these messages are outgoing. A good strategy would be to intitially send one of these and then accumulate these per sender messages over, say 24h and send only one further notification per day. Incidentially, this strategy is something known to most people that ever implemented automatic notification emails on system failures...
I think there is just no good way to deal with this issuse, as long as open, badly configures relays are around. It is also quite possible that the gmail designers never anticipated this and not are not readily able to respont in an adequate fashion (see the 24h accumulation, e.g.). That would possibly indicate a lack of competent security people involved in the design process. As these people are scarce everywhere, Google will also likely not have enough of them.
On my own mailservers (small), I use silend drop for relay requests (which is definitely a good idea) and "drop into spambox" for unknown destinations. I look over these occasionally, and I have found legitimate email in there.
I do agree that initial bounce sounds like the right strategy, but unfortunately it does have serious problems.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Warning: offtopic
IMAP and MAPI are two separate protocols. IMAP is a standard protocol used for semi-connected work on folders actually hosted on a server (it can work disconnected and sync up later), whereas MAPI is a Microsoft proprietary protocol that accomplishes approximately the same thing.
I tend to think that the name MAPI is a typical Microsoft attempt to get people to confuse (it worked, didn't it?) open, widely used standards and Microsoft proprietary crap. See also OOXML vs ODF (formerly OOXML, before Microsoft even dreamed of that acronym...)
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
Actually, MAPI (Mail API) is the old Microsoft standard for mail-related communication between Windows applications. I remember using it in Windows 3, long before IMAP was widely adopted. It was later extended to MAPI/RPC for communication with Exchange servers. This is one case where anti-Microsoft paranoia isn't justified...
(this is not a