Absolutely not. do not enable a blacklist by default

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 10:52 AM, Michael McConville <[email protected]> wrote:
> Stuart Henderson wrote:
>> On 2016/03/15 12:55, Craig Skinner wrote:
>> > There are a few more paid rsync lists here:
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_DNS_blacklists
>>
>> Ah that is a useful page. Maybe we could list it, e.g.
>>
>> Index: spamd.conf
>> ===================================================================
>> RCS file: /cvs/src/etc/mail/spamd.conf,v
>> retrieving revision 1.5
>> diff -u -p -r1.5 spamd.conf
>> --- spamd.conf        14 Mar 2016 21:36:52 -0000      1.5
>> +++ spamd.conf        15 Mar 2016 13:27:04 -0000
>> @@ -13,8 +13,10 @@
>>  # Lists specified with the :white: capability apply to the previous
>>  # list with a :black: capability.
>>  #
>> -# As of November 2004, a place to search for blacklists is
>> -#     http://spamlinks.net/filter-bl.htm
>> +# As of March 2016, a place to search for blacklists is
>> +#     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_DNS_blacklists
>> +# - most of these are DNS-based only and cannot be used with spamd(8),
>> +# but some of the lists also provide access to text files via rsync.
>>
>>  all:\
>>       :uatraps:nixspam:
>
> ok mmcc@
>
>> > Generally, everything has changed from file feeds to DNS.
>>
>> Yep, because for the more actively maintained ones 1) new entries show
>> up more quickly than any sane rsync interval, this is quite important
>> for good blocking these days 2) DNS is less resource intensive and more
>> easily distributed than rsync, and 3) importantly for the rbl providers,
>> it gives additional input to them about new mail sources (if an rbl
>> suddenly starts seeing queries from all over the world for a previously
>> unseen address, it's probably worth investigation - I am sure this is
>> why some of the commercial antispam operators provide free DNS-based
>> lookups for smaller orgs).
>>
>> A more flexible approach would be to skip the PF table integration
>> completely and do DNS lookups in spamd (or, uh, relayd, or something
>> new) and based on that it could choose whether to tarpit, greylist or
>> transparent-forward the connection to the real mail server. This
>> would also give a way to use dnswl.org's whitelist to avoid greylisting
>> for those hosts where it just doesn't work well (gmail, office365 etc).
>
> Interesting, I didn't even know that rsync blacklists existed. That was
> the cause for confusion about Spamhaus's price earlier.
>
> Would it make sense to enable a blacklist or two by default in spamd?
> They seem to be an effectively necessary part of a sane mail server
> configuration these days.
>

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