[SURBL-Discuss] More spams with Zdnet redirector

Chris Santerre csanterre at MerchantsOverseas.com
Fri Apr 8 15:47:20 CEST 2005



>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jeff Chan [mailto:jeffc at surbl.org]
>Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2005 10:55 PM
>To: SURBL Discussion list
>Subject: Re: [SURBL-Discuss] More spams with Zdnet redirector
>
>
>On Thursday, April 7, 2005, 12:45:51 PM, Patrik Nilsson wrote:
>> At 00:13 2005-04-07 -0700, Jeff Chan wrote:
>>>On Wednesday, April 6, 2005, 11:58:31 PM, Nick Askew wrote:
>>> > Jeff,
>>>
>>> > So it seems that there is an obvious loophole in SURBL. 
>As long as the
>>> > spammer uses a legitimate business running a redirector 
>you will never 
>>> black
>>> > list them (perhaps the spammer could even set up their 
>own legitimate
>>> > redirector). This open redirector discussion for ZDNET 
>has been open for
>>> > several weeks now, they have had more than ample warning.
>>>
>>> > Nick
>>>
>>>No, it's not a loophole.  Programs like SpamAssassin and
>>>SpamCopURI correctly parse some redirection sites like
>>>g.msn.com and check the redirected-to site.
>
>
>> That workaround is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
>
>> If we encourage client implementations to work around the 
>problem in that 
>> way, we will always have:
>
>> 1. Clients that need to be updated with the latest 
>redirectors, unless we 
>> provide and encourage implementations to use a constantly 
>updated online 
>> source of redirectors.
>
>> 2. Major redirectors getting included in the special 
>work-arounds, like 
>> Google, and smaller ones not getting included.
>
>> If we believe that open redirectors are bad, we should not solve the 
>> problem by working around a few major ones that we are 
>currently aware of.
>
>> Patrik 
>
>Our solution is to detect and check the big ones, and try
>to get all of them to not be open to spammers.
>
>What's your solution?  Blacklisting all open redirectors?
>So no one should be able to mention them?

Thats EXACTLY what the new gray list will do. 

--Chris 
'If it appears in spam, list it'

(I can't take credit for the above tagline. Another nut came up with it
before me!)


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