SPAM on the list

Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.CSIRO.AU)
Thu, 26 Feb 1998 09:52:37 +1100

I have been running a spam filter for several months now, which cut my
spam to 0 for a couple of months. I've now noticed an increase in spam
sent to mailing lists such as linux-kernel. I'd like to put in a plea
to the list maintainers that some kind of spam filtering be inserted
at the input end of the list. The most recent piece of rubbish I've
seen come in:

5t53221@mci.com writes:
> Authenticated sender is <5t53321@mci.com>
> Subject: 2-24
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3D"us-ascii"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> EMAIL MARKETING WORKS!!

[Offal Deleted]

Now, if you look at the header:

> From: 5t53221 <5t53221@mci.com>
> Sender: owner-linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu
> To: <linda@net-connect.net>
> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 02:34:58 -0600

This wasn't sent to the linux-kernel list, either in a "To:" or a
"Cc:" line. So one simple recipe would be to send messages without
such header lines to /dev/null.

Another recipe could be to not allow postings by people not on the
mailing list. I thought that this was already done?

Yet another recipe could be to check the domain in the "From:" address
and see if there is a match somewhere in the received path (i.e. a
simple forgery test).

So how about it guys? I have the feeling that spammers are targeting
more and more mailing lists.

Regards,

Richard....

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