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Re: [Asrg] draft-irtf-asrg-bcp-blacklists-01 March 24, 2008

2008-04-05 05:17:10
On Fri, Apr 04, 2008 at 10:43:51PM -0400, Chris Lewis wrote:
Personally, I think that collateral damage is a reasonable term, and
all of the dnsbls don't block mail weasel wording is counterproductive,
since we're talking about policy, not code.

Collateral damage is a loaded term, and carries a lot of baggage from 
outside of the Internet.  I think we have to both mention it (so that 
some people know what we're talking about), but at the same time try to 
partially neutralize the extraneous knee-jerk reaction.

Let me add two other things to this that haven't come up before.

1. "Collateral damage" is a Vietnam war-era euphemism for unintended damage
during a military operation.  I'm guessing that's the baggage you might have
been referring to.  DNSBL listings or their usage are incapable of causing any
damage: they don't conduct DoS attacks, for example.

2. [Most] DNSBL listings larger than a single IP don't have "collateral" 
effects.
Here's what I mean: suppose spam is received from 1.2.3.42.  Suppose a
DNSBL operator queries the network owner and find that 1.2.3.0/24 is owned
by Foo Networks, and decides to list all of it.  This affects (obviously)
whoever is at 1.2.3.43.  But is it a collateral effect?  No.  Whoever is
at 1.2.3.43 is not the subject of the listing: Foo Networks is.  There's
nothing unintentional about it, there's nothing misdirected about it, it's
not an escalation, it's just an implementation of a particular hypothetical
DNSBL policy which says "if we receive spam from your network, we will list
all of it".  There's nothing wrong or right with that policy: it's just one
choice among many.

Now if (in this example) the DNSBL operator made a typographical error (thus
bringing into play the "unintentional" factor) and listed 1.2.3.0/23 instead
of 1.2.3.0/24 (thus bringing into play the concept of effects extending beyond
the bounds they were intended to) then THAT would be a collateral effect.
It's still not damage of course, but it would at least qualify as "collateral"
in this particular sense of the term.

---Rsk
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