At 02:24 PM 8/10/2003, Andreas Saurwein wrote:
Hi everybody!
I've been wondering what would happen if every mail server starts to
blindly accept every mail address as long as it belongs to a valid domain
served by this server. I think that is commonly known as catch-all or
blackholes.
As I see it, this would have two effects:
1) a dramatic rise of spam sent to non-existant mail addresses
2) huge numbers of non-existant mail addresses on spammers lists
Wouldnt that render the spam lists worthless in a rather short time?
Nobody would be able to distinguish real from wrong mail addresses
anymore. Directory Harvest attacks would have a 100% success rate but
depending on the program a almost 0% rate of useful results.
I am aware of the impact this might have on mail servers. But how long
would it take for spammers change their tactics?
Assuming that a lot of spammers use someone else's computers to do the
spamming it will not do much aside from reducing the overall spamming
response rate but not increasing the spammer's costs since they do not
spend money on sending the emails. Instead, it will increase the mail
volume on the Internet thousand-fold and will make things much more
complicated on the Internet since no one will every know whether an email
address is valid or not. People will continue to send emails to old
addresses thinking they are valid. Dictionary attacks are the only thing
that this method will get rid of. At a specific point the response rate
will fall so low that spammers will no longer have the incentive to spam.
However, the Internet email system will probably be disrupted long before that.
The question is when will spammers stop due to the lowering response rate..
My suggestion would be to a setup a bunch of honeypots and see what happens.
Yakov
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