Phil Barnett wrote:
On Tuesday 12 December 2006 07:28, JamesDR wrote:
There is nothing in SPF to keep a spammer with a botnet from putting
0.0.0.0/0 as their approved domain limit.
Sounds like a good spam sign to me. Let the spammers put 0.0.0.0/0 in
their spf records, I'll pop in 3 points for good measure.

But, you are making some assumptions at this point and that is the crux of why SPF can't work very well.

Say you give points for that one. So, where do you draw the line. Do you give points for (for example) 123.0.0.0/8? What if that is someone's legitimate domain space?

Bot masters can easily set up SPF addresses that will encompass giant subnets of bots. You'll never know where to draw the line.


Even better. If they give me a giant subnet of SPF records, I know exactly what IP's I don't want connecting to my mail server. If a spammer sends a spam from a subnet, passes SPF. I will and have gone, looked at their record and blocked what they say is 'allowed' to send me spam. In a way, they've done me a huge favor by block their entire bot net at the router. Quite effective at stopping spam indeed. This does have a huge issue with collateral damage, however what I would also do is contact the ISP and point them to the SPF record "see, your network is owned by a spammer." Also makes it very handy for RBL lists to know where future spam will come from.

I welcome spammers creating SPF records. Makes my job quite easy in stopping the bot army.

--
Thanks,
James

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