[Politech] Monkeys.com anti-spam blacklist shuttered by online attack [sp]

From: Declan McCullagh (declan@private)
Date: Thu Sep 25 2003 - 22:07:46 PDT

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    See some writeups here:
    http://www.msnbc.com/news/959094.asp?0cv=TB10
    http://www.circleid.com/article/287_0_1_0_C/
    http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/09/24/132216.shtml?tid=111&tid=126&tid=95
    
    ---
    
    From: Hugh Lilly <hl@private>
    Organization: http://hugh.orcon.net.nz
    Subject: Fwd: Another DNS blacklist is taken down
    Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 12:32:18 +1200
    To: Dave Farber <dave@private>, Declan McCullagh <declan@private>
    
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    Declan, Dave,
    
    Forwarded from NANOG for your consideration for IP/Politech.
    
    - -hdl
    
    - ----------  Forwarded Message:  ----------
    
    Subject: Another DNS blacklist is taken down
    Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 04:28
    From: Justin Shore <listuser@private>
    To: nanog@private
    
    I thought ya'll might be interested to hear that yet another DNS blacklist
    has been taken down out of fear of the DDoS attacks that took down
    Osirusoft, Monkeys.com, and the OpenRBL.  Blackholes.compu.net suffered a
    joe-job earlier this week.  Apparently the joe-jobbing was enough to
    convince some extremely ignorant mail admins that Compu.net is spamming
    and blocked mail from compu.net.  Compu.net has also seen the effects of
    DDoS attacks on other DNS blacklist maintainers.  They've decided that the
    risk to their actual business is too great and they are pulling the plug
    on their DNS blacklist before they come under the gun by spammers.
    
    http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=3f70e839%241%40dimaggio.newszilla.com
    
    Ron Guilmette, maintainer of the Monkeys.com blacklists has posted a
    farewell from Monkeys.com to news.admin.net-abuse.email.  Ron cites the
    total lack of interest in the attacks by both big network providers and
    law enforcement authorities as the ultimate reason he's pulling the plug.
    
    http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22Now+retired+from+spam+fighting%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=vn1lufn8h6r38%40corp.supernews.com&rnum=4
    
    It's truely a sad day for spam fighters everywhere.
    
    So, my question for NANOG is how does one go about attracting the
    attention of law enforcement when your network is under attack?  How does
    the target of such an attack get a large network provider who's customers
    are part of the attack to pay attention?  Is media attention the only way
    to pressure a response from either group?  These DDoS attacks have
    received some attention in mainstream media:
    
    http://www.msnbc.com/news/959094.asp?0cv=TB10
    http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/08/28/saboteurs_hit_spams_blockers
    
    Apparently it hasn't been enough.  Legal remedies take too long and are
    cost prohibitive (unless you're the DoJ).  Subpoenas and civil lawsuits
    take months if not years.  Relief is needed in days if not hours.
    
    Justin
    
    - -------------------------------------------------------
    
    - --
                               (C) 2003 Hugh Lilly
                              mail: hl@private
                         blog: http://hugh.orcon.net.nz
        Registered Linux User # 295486, register @ http://counter.li.org
             ______________________________________________________
             There's only so much stupidity you can compensate for;
             there comes a point where you compensate for so much
               stupidity that it starts to cause problems for the
                   people who actually think in a normal way.
                     -Bill, digital.forest tech support
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    Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 15:09:37 +0530
    To: dave@private
    From: Udhay Shankar N <udhay@private>
    Subject: Re: [IP] Another DNS blacklist is taken down
    Cc: declan@private
    
    Might this not be another legitimate use for Freenet [1] or Eternity [2]?
    
    What I am imagining here is that a loosely knit group of volunteers 
    collates and prepares a blacklist, and then publishes this blacklist to 
    freenet or eternity once a day or so. This would seem to be not vulnerable 
    to the kind of DDoS described below.
    
    Thoughts from the IP list?
    
    Udhay
    
    [1] http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
    [2] http://www.cypherspace.org/~adam/eternity/
    
    
    >I thought ya'll might be interested to hear that yet another DNS blacklist
    >has been taken down out of fear of the DDoS attacks that took down
    >Osirusoft, Monkeys.com, and the OpenRBL.  Blackholes.compu.net suffered a
    >joe-job earlier this week.  Apparently the joe-jobbing was enough to
    >convince some extremely ignorant mail admins that Compu.net is spamming
    >and blocked mail from compu.net.  Compu.net has also seen the effects of
    >DDoS attacks on other DNS blacklist maintainers.  They've decided that the
    >risk to their actual business is too great and they are pulling the plug
    >on their DNS blacklist before they come under the gun by spammers.
    >
    >http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=3f70e839%241
    >%40dimaggio.newszilla.com
    >
    >Ron Guilmette, maintainer of the Monkeys.com blacklists has posted a
    >farewell from Monkeys.com to news.admin.net-abuse.email.  Ron cites the
    >total lack of interest in the attacks by both big network providers and
    >law enforcement authorities as the ultimate reason he's pulling the plug.
    >
    >http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22Now+retired+from+spam+fighting%22&hl=en&
    >lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=vn1lufn8h6r38%40corp.supernews.com&rnum=4
    
    <snip>
    
    
    
    -- 
    ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
    
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