Anti-spam WG minutes May 1999

[Rodney Tillotson <]

Apologies for the late distribution.
Thanks to Gerry Berthauer for these minutes -- he did his bit in good time.

--------------------------------------------

RIPE anti-spam Working Group
RIPE 33 Meeting, 6 May 1999, Vienna Austria

Chair: Rodney Tillotson UKERNA
Scribe: Gerry Berthauer RIPE NCC


Agenda

1. Administrivia

1.1 Introductions
1.2 Note taker
1.3 Agree agenda

2. Update

2.1 Recent list discussion
2.2 Other developments

3. Code of conduct

3.1 AUP's
3.2 LINX

4. CENAR

5. WG way forward

6. AOB




1. Administrivia

1.1 Introductions
1.2 Note taker

Gerry Berthauer RIPE NCC - note taker

1.3 Agree agenda

Yes. 


Other items:


Software vs transit
DUL

No other items

2. Update

2.1 Recent list discussion
2.2 Other developments

People using software that interferes with spam?

The audience came up with several options to work around the problem
of spam

1. Looking for spam filters which track down and discard spam.
2. Working on a plan where people have the option for a different mail
relay. Force the mail over a filtering relay to filter out the most
obvious spam. Set up a DUL. A check for spam only on headers not on
bodies to prevent legal trouble.
3. User-level filtering 
4. Setting up a blacklist of excessive spammers.  
5. Customers can choose for options to exclude spammers (GUI, tickbox)
6. Length counting of the address to detect spammers.
7. If one gets hit by a spam attack, we offer them to send their
outgoing mail to be checked by pattern-spotting script. If so, mail
will be thrown away.
8. Check email with fingerprint method. If mail matches the
fingerprint, mail will be thrown off the customer's POP3 boxes.

Petra Zeidler: There is or there has been a site in Germany with spam
examples. It's not sure if this site is still there. There is/ was the
possibility to subscribe to a mailing list.



There is no readily software available as far as known.
Little bits of technology moved on a bit but lots remained the same.

DUL

Where does the gathering of information come from?

DUL: Achieve very little for a short term?

Only 20% recognized as spam. This is not acceptable.

Manual exclusion of dial up customers to an excluded C block at the
border of the network.

Is there a list or are there lists of companies which threw out spammers? 

There are, but the main thing is to spread the word around. It is hard
though because spammers change their company names quite often.

Spammers won't stop and will go one step further. These spammers have
certain intrusion skills but not specific Unix knowledge of
systems. These are technical people who know what they are doing. This
is illegal.

Someone from the audience saw abuse of a proxy service which was not
set up correctly. If so, you're affected by traceback of the spammer.

The only reliable part of a mail transaction is the IP address.


Little bits of technology moved on a bit but lots remained the same.


3. Code of Conduct.


Allow port 25 scans on customer's systems. Include this in a code of conduct?

Is there a role for RIPE NCC to inform ISP's about open relays and to
inform ISP's to do something about it? It's worth to discuss this.


3.1 AUP's

Input we can get wrt AUP's. The chair asks to come up with anything to
collect material of AUP's dealing with spam.



3.2 LINX

There is documentation available soon. LINX works on documentation.


4. CENAR.

No positive input which shows a need for CENAR. It's not high on
people's lists.

Instead of working on CENAR, cooperation between CERTs and ISPs?



5. WG way forward - skipped

6. AOB - none

--------------------------------------------