[Discuss] anti-spam.

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2006-05-25 18:59-0700 pw wrote:

> Alan W. Irwin wrote:
>>  Thus, I am looking
>> forward to the days when these extraordinary anti-spam measures will no
>> longer be necessary because spammers will find it so difficult to break 
>> into
>> home computers to turn them into spam servers.
>> 
>
> I'm sure there must be a few windows spam worms being used,
> however, most of the more sophisticated spammers/phishers are now
> using Linux boxes with a mailserver of thier own.

I don't think you mean they are constantly breaking into Linux home boxes.
So the implication is they own (in the original monetary sense) a largely
fixed set of boxes which they use to send out spam.  But as soon as those
boxes got detected as spam servers they would get blacklisted. So your
scenario doesn't make sense to me.

I don't do extensive reading in this field so I cannot quote you chapter and
verse, but I have certainly read fairly recently in one of the ubiquitous
spam stories that the vast majority of viruses were being designed by
spammers simply to satisfy their constant need to steal control of new boxes
for spam servers since previous boxes where they have stolen control keep
getting blacklisted.  If that is not the fundamental way in which spammers
work, then what is the point of all the blacklisting infrastructure and why
is it ineffective against your alternative scenario of a relatively fixed
set of spam servers?

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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