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Re: [Asrg] 7. Best Practices - DNSBLs - Article

2003-08-12 17:03:47
At 3:57 PM -0400 2003/08/12, Chris Lewis wrote:

 We know _exactly_ how each of the DNSBLs we're using work - their
 effectiveness ratings, FP ratings, because we see and measure all of it.

Not true. You know how the first one in your list is operating, at least to the level of rejections that result from it, and then complaints that come when when those rejections appear to be inaccurate.

You don't know how the next one would have done, if the first one hadn't blocked that message. You don't know how many false negatives made it through. And of the positives, you don't really know how many are true and how many are false.

You would have to look up each address in all black lists (noting both hits and misses, as well as the time of the lookup) before making your decision, and you would have to use other means to investigate the negatives that make it through the system and re-look them up again at various recurring periods in time (to see if they were added to the list after the message got through your system).

Then you would have to track which black lists result in the most positive hits with the lowest false negative and false positive ratios.


In other words, you'd have to look up every single address that ever contacts your mail server (including ones that may get rejected for other reasons before they would normally hit the black list checks), in all black lists, re-query on a periodic basis, and track all hits and all misses for all IP addresses, ad infinitum.

I'm pretty sure you don't do that. I've made an attempt at doing that for ntp.org, at least in terms of ordering the black lists that we do use.

 There are a number of "ratings" services already that can be help
 with the initial choice.

        Really?  Where are they?  I'd like to make use of them....

 [We have a DNSBL BCP which I should publish soon.]

        I look forward to seeing it.

--
Brad Knowles, <brad(_dot_)knowles(_at_)skynet(_dot_)be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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