On 2/21/02 5:25 PM, "John Morton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Nobody has bothered to do this YET. That we know of. But the spamhacks are >> evolving rapidly. > > Well, let's find out shall we? Set up a honeypot private list containing a > collection of free mail accounts, then cycle through the account every week > checking for spam and making some postings to keep the traffic up. Enough > with the armchair anthropology, already! Um, John? I've been doing that for months. It's a standard tactic I use to test for archive harvests. No offense, but given I'd already thought of the "subscribe and harvest" attack, wouldn't you think I also would have looked for ways to detect it? I just don't like to talk about it. One has to think the harvesters are listening. I don't like giving away too many secrets -- but at the same time, it's something we have ot share ideas and concepts over... > So basically you need to deploy a countermeasure, monitor it's effectiveness, > and deploy another when it fails. Repeat for as long as you consider it > important, or can tolerate not resorting to private archives, and > establishing better trust relationships with the subscribers. Yup. Sounds familiar. >> Fact is, if they want your subscribers, they can get them. Or more >> correctly, your subscribers that post -- but if everyone lurks in fear, why >> hav a mail list? > > I think we all need to take a deep breath and say 'It's only junkmail'. > They're not spending up large on your credit card or pouring sugar into your > gas tank. I won't argue. I expect Jay will pop up shortly and do it for me. Which is, I think, the point. Just because you aren't too sensitive to the mail doesn't mean others aren't -- so we have to keep all of the views in mind. And this is a case where I actually side more on your view, but still understand the need to manage this for those that don't have my tolerance level. > It's probably one of the top three or four already. Do listserv and majordomo > admins have a major spam problem? Majordomo I did. Majordomo II? I dunno. Ditto listserv. I simply haven't looked. > (of course you have to publish the mailing list address, so you can deduce > the admin address from that...:-) Only if you don't change them. Making them standard might not be a good idea, once they're hidden behind contact forms. > The problem with obscurity as a security tool is that it's not reliable. It only works until it fails, and then you can't fix it. And I've found it invariably fails at 10PM on a Friday night, when you're about to leave for the weekend -- unless it's 2PM on a Thursday with a Friday deadline. > Obscurity is useful. In our case, it's the only prevention tool we have. I'm not sure obscurity is the right word. Most of what we're talking about is more of a cloaking effort. -- Chuq Von Rospach, Architech [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www.chuqui.com/ The first rule of holes: If you are in one, stop digging. _______________________________________________ Mailman-Developers mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers