On July 2, 2003 at 12:31 wegrzyn(_at_)garbagedump(_dot_)com (C. Wegrzyn) wrote:
That is exactly what I have been saying, on and off, for the past month
or so (when I thought it was wise to stop lurking). The only really
solution to the problem is a receiver side solution, whether it happens
at the client or the MTA for the user.
I believe that to be exactly wrong, and not just to be argumentative.
The problems are:
No such solution has been laid out which would discourage a spammer
from continuing to try to find victims. Many end-user solutions suffer
from adoptability problems, complexity of usage (e.g., managing a
Bayesian filtering system or whitelist.)
Being as spammers seem to be using upwards of millions (we don't know,
certainly thousands and thousands) of infected, hijacked hosts the
real possibility is that the net and mail servers in particular will
become so flooded with spam that it will cause the mail infrastructure
and many of its assumptions to fail in various ways (as it is
already.)
Independent of other observations there seems to be some agreement
that spam traffic is increasing exponentially. How long can that go on
before we have significant infrastructure problems (even if just in
cost)?
It remains to be proven whether spammers increase or decrease their
traffic in the face of discouragement (such as filters.)
There is reason to believe that in fact they increase their traffic
when confronted with various filtering etc, even if for no other
reason than the simple observation that for the past few years more
and more filtering has been put in place, and spam has grown rapidly
nonetheless.
Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it's correlated:
Their cost is so low (using stolen/hijacked resources) that it becomes
worth their while to try less focused brute-force approaches when
challenged by filtering etc.
Put another way, the end-user/recipient proposals thus far are plagued
with the "arms race" problem.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | bzs(_at_)TheWorld(_dot_)com |
http://www.TheWorld.com
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