Subject: Re: CCL:Stupid adds

From: "Zoli Fekete, keeper of hungarian-faq" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 11:17:58 -0400 (EDT)

I should point out that the 'From:' line is totally useless in fighting 
malicious email (for the magazine spam is not merely stupid - it's a 
product of an infamous net abuse, who could not have any hope to generate 
profit). It is al too easily forgeable, as it clearly was in out case. 
However, the situation is not nearly as hopeless as Jan described! A 
close look at the header information reveals that the CCL listserv does 
authenticate the sender's host: 
>Received: from [198.70.48.43] (actually pm1-44.ixc.net)
> by nd.edu with SMTP (PP); Sat, 07 Oct 1995 22:57:44 -0500
 (and various other dial-in machines at ixc.net in similar instances) - 
that is the domain that ought to be filtered out, not the bogus sender 
address.
 Also notice that email-bombing the perpetrator, even if targeted right
(which was not the case for the pieces of advice surfacing on CCL), is not
an effective way to fight this plague. The culprits are prepared (using
throwaway accounts and such), and usually don't need to use their email
box anyways. But the mass of email meant to flood them has to travel thru
the network, wasting resources and quite possibly bringing down the often
innocent host system perhaps together with ones connecting to it! On the
other hand they may have installed some system that just throws the
incoming mail away, so the revenge would not have any effect at all. So
the recourse one must use is turning to the system administrators (eg. 
[email-masked] and the postmasters of the email drops employed for
this scheme, ie. [email-masked]). If they do not respond then the
site next in the link should be contacted - responsible administrators are
ready to stem such abuses exploiting their system. 

--
 Zoli [email-masked], keeper of <http://hix.mit.edu/hungarian-faq/>
 <'finger [email-masked]'> 
"For my assured failures and derelictions, I ask pardon beforehand of my
betters and my equals in my calling." 		- 	Rudyard Kipling