Talking about SPAMDOMAINS anyone have a list they would like to share
with me (on or offlist).
I just setup this test and put in the ones I could THINK of of top of
my head (yahoo, msn, hotmail and a couple of others) but my list was
no more then about 10-12 before I ran out of domains I could think of
that I know was commonly used..

Best regards,
 Eje "Aya" Gustafsson                 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Family Entertainment Network      http://www.fament.com
Phone : 620-231-7777                  Fax   : 240-376-7272
            - Your Full Time Professionals -
        Online Store http://www.wisp-router.com/
 MikroTik, Star-OS, PACWireless, EnGenius, RF Industries
-- 

MB> Let's keep in mind that the discussion has changed from the original 
MB> topic of MAILFROM Forged to VERP + Forged.

MB> For the last day I've been filtering using the SPAMDOMAINS method which 
MB> captures examples of both topics in this thread, however it didn't 
MB> capture E-mail that fakes a local domain when it is sent from my 
MB> Microsoft SMTP server because I have that IPBYPASSed (there would 
MB> otherwise be a lot of this).


MB> MAILFROM Forged
MB> -----------------------------------
MB> As far as the MAILFROM test goes for finding faked local addresses, here 
MB> are my results but bear in mind that this excludes intra-server faked 
MB> domains from Web sites:

MB>     3 - Spam w/Forged address (2 passed filters with 80% of fail weight, 
MB> 1 failed).
MB>     9 - Legit w/Forged address (E-mails sent from one local user to 
MB> another local user but didn't use my server for sending.)
MB> =========================================================================
MB>   12 - E-mails caught with whitelisting local Web server.

MB> For me the FP rate of a MAILFROM ENDSWITH local domain test was 75% with 
MB> whitelisting (as it is currently set) or about 89% without whitelisting 
MB> because of mail sent from local Web sites.  The FP rate would definitely 
MB> higher on weekdays because legit volume is higher and several customers 
MB> have business communications sent forged.  This test tagged a total of 3 
MB> pieces of spam out of a total of 1,968 unique messages received (0.15% 
MB> of unique messages).

MB> I am going to look at an entire week's traffic with the MAILFROM test as 
MB> Andrew suggested in order to spot the possibility of adding a point or 
MB> two if there is leeway in the current scoring.  For such a small number 
MB> of forged addresses though, I don't want to risk the possibility of 
MB> FPing on anything.  I do have problems with legit E-mail doing this that 
MB> fails multiple tests that I don't want to turn down to allow this, and I 
MB> don't like to whitelist if at all possible.


MB> SPAMDOMAINS-based VERP + Forged
MB> ------------------------------------------------
MB> Now as far as the SPAMDOMAINS-based test results go, here's what I found:

MB> 120 - Spam messages caught (71%)
MB>           117 - Spam w/VERP
MB>               3 - Spam w/Forged addresses
MB>   50 - Legit messages caught (29%)
MB>           41 - Legit w/VERP
MB>             9 - Legit w/Forged addresses
MB> ====================
MB> 170 - Total Messages Caught

MB> The only spams that got through were the two mentioned above that 
MB> actually forged the local sender.  I also had one false positive in this 
MB> group which was sent from Yahoo Groups and FP'd because for some reason, 
MB> this message failed EASYNET-PROXIES.  I assume that this was a problem 
MB> in the lookup returned by Easynet because that IP is not currently in 
MB> their database, and that same server successfully sent about 40 other 
MB> messages without being caught.  This message was also sent to a dead 
MB> address that I am scoring as a 'spamtrap' but it is forwarded to another 
MB> account so I'm not killing the message automatically.

MB>  From looking at the spam using VERP, almost all of it came from a small 
MB> handful of companies who have been tagged by FIVETEN-SPAMSUPPORT, 
MB> MAILPOLICE-BULK, SPAMCOP, EASYNET-DNSBL and SBL.  All but about 5 of 
MB> these were tagged by at least two of those mentioned which is enough to 
MB> fail any message with no other points necessary.  None of the spam VERP 
MB> messages passed my filters.

MB> It appears that all of this VERP stuff comes from gray-spam (for lack of 
MB> a better word).  These are addresses harvested primarily from contest 
MB> and free membership sites with participants knowingly giving their 
MB> addresses away for such things (not all of it uses VERP of course).  The 
MB> ones using VERP likely have somewhat static addresses and therefore 
MB> these mailers are easily tagged by the leading blocklists.  I don't 
MB> believe I have any problems with VERP spammers, though this will take 
MB> more monitoring to make a solid conclusion.

MB> I do have problems already with FP's on legit opt-in advertising, some 
MB> of which use VERP.  Too often such places find their way onto MailPolice 
MB> or SpamCop only to be removed shortly thereafter, a problem that 
MB> originates from spamtraps that were once real accounts being forwarded 
MB> and from some members of these sites that consider anything that is 
MB> ad-related to be spam, even if they are a customer and have the ability 
MB> to easily opt-out.  This very fact accounts for the vast majority of my 
MB> FP's, though they are the types of FP's that I do nothing with because 
MB> they aren't missed, but I don't want to block them with any sort of 
MB> regularity.

MB> Right now I don't see any opportunity in scoring VERP, and only a very 
MB> small opportunity in scoring true forged From addresses.  There is no 
MB> doubt that your test finds spam, but the overall FP rates of both tests 
MB> scares me greatly.  Everyone's setup is unique though, and so is their 
MB> traffic,  so some might benefit from the test you are using. 

MB> Is that a fair enough presentation?  BTW, are you using grep and other 
MB> utilities on Windows?  If so, where did you get your tools?  This could 
MB> make pattern matching much less laborious for me, but I'd have to brush 
MB> up (a lot) on regular expressions.

MB> Matt


MB> Bill Landry wrote:

>> Scott, is this list moderated?  I sent a response to the list 
>> regarding this thread on Friday and it has not shown up on the list.  
>> This has happened to me at least three times over the past month or so.
>>  
>> Matt, the addresses you are referring to below are not bounce 
>> messages, they are Variable Envelope Return Path (VERP) addresses 
>> that some list servers use to manage bounce messages and automate 
>> address removal.  And just because lots of spammers are starting to 
>> implement and support VERP on their spam lists does not mean that I 
>> want to deliver these spam messages to my customers.
>>  
>> Do the subjects shown in the attached text file (zipped to pass spam 
>> filters) that have been flagged so far today (by the FORGED-DOMAINS 
>> spamdomains test I setup) look like legit, non-spam messages?  Over 
>> 90% of these messages are sent by VERP style from addresses, but so 
>> what, they are still clearly spam that my customers do not want.
>>  
>> Anyway, what works for me in my battle to fight spam may not work for 
>> you, and vise versa.  BTW, the search string I used to output this 
>> file is shown at the top of the attached file.
>>  
>> Bill
>>
>>     ----- Original Message -----
>>     From: Matthew Bramble <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>     To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>     <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>     Sent: Friday, September 19, 2003 11:05 PM
>>     Subject: Re: [Declude.JunkMail] blocking spam faked as coming from
>>     local address
>>
>>     Ok, I set up a test using SPAMDOMAINS functionality as was
>>     described in this thread.  It just caught two E-mails, however
>>     both were not actually forged, but instead the HELO From address
>>     included a long string for list washing of bounced addresses.  One
>>     of these is in Bill's list in fact:
>>
>>         Received: from mail03-art-edu.mx07.com [209.66.76.42] by
>>         my-hosted-domain.com with ESMTP
>>           (SMTPD32-7.13) id A10141101A8; Sat, 20 Sep 2003 01:09:21 -0400
>>         Received: (from [EMAIL PROTECTED])
>>         by mail03-art-edu.mx07.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id AAA89631;
>>         Sat, 20 Sep 2003 00:18:39 -0400 (EDT)
>>         Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 01:07:37 -0400 (EDT)
>>         Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>         From: The Arts & Education Source
>>         <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>         To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>         Subject: [16] What is Phentermine?
>>         MIME-Version: 1.0
>>         Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
>>         boundary="MIME_BOUNDARY-23113-0-1064028662"
>>         X-Declude-Sender:
>>         [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>         [209.66.76.42]
>>         X-Declude-Spoolname: De101041101a8865d.SMD
>>         X-Note: This E-mail was scanned by iGaia Incorporated's E-mail
>>         service (www.igaia.com) for spam.
>>         X-Note: This E-mail was sent from mail03-art-edu.mx07.com
>>         ([209.66.76.42]).
>>         X-Spam-Tests-Failed: SPAMCOP, MAILPOLICE-BULK, NOLEGITCONTENT,
>>         FORGEDASLOCAL, W-HIGH, W-MED, W-LOW, W-SUB [16]
>>
>>     When I assembled my stats I worked from the E-mail's From address
>>     found in the headers and not in the HELO (X-Declude-Sender).  It
>>     appears that setting this up using SPAMDOMAINS will result in
>>     scoring any bounce handlers that include the receiver's address in
>>     the HELO data, but not necessarily in the message's headers.  Our
>>     tests were not checking the same things, and it appears that much
>>     of what you are catching are bounce addresses.  I was using
>>     MAILFROM with ENDSWITH which doesn't catch these bounce
>>     addresses.  I double checked, and forged senders continue to be
>>     very rare on my server.  I don't know that I want to punish
>>     bulk-mailers that are looking for bounces either since many in
>>     fact are legitimate, such as several from a recent post referenced
>>     by Andrew:
>>
>>         [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>         [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>         [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>         [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>         [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>         [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>     Maybe I set up my test wrong (just one domain.tld per line)?  If
>>     not, it's probably important to know that you are adding scores to
>>     these things.  SPAMDOMAINS works as a CONTAINS filter and not an
>>     ENDSWITH filter, so it's going to get tagged all the time with
>>     bounce messages instead of forged local senders.
>>
>>     BTW, I found the forged E-mails by searching for
>>     "@my-local-domain.tld [" since that is unique formating for the
>>     X-Declude-Sender line.
>>
>>     Matt
>>

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