www.devco.net by r.i.pienaar

Anti Spam plans by the clueless

Derek Wyatt MP has some brilliant ideas about spam and he is not afraid to sound off about it in public. On his site he has a short write up about his plans which involves incorporating a post code in all email addresses in order to track spammers to their homes. He suggests putting the postcode inside the domain name, so user@whatever.co.uk would become user@whateverpostcode.co.uk - visionary. In true British don't-even-think-of-looking-at-my14-year-old paranoia fashion he even has a plan for minors who do not want to hand out their postcodes - a PIN number instead of the postcode and the PIN would be assigned by none other than the Information Commissioner. Read the whole proposal here
This is the man who in his own biography says he went into politics because "I thought the British people deserved better."
NTK has the following to say, and I really cannot do any better.

Derek, unfortunately, appears to be fighting the good fight with the Shield of Wholesale Technical Misunderstanding and the U-Shaped Gun Of Shooting One's Own Mouth Off.

Derek is the Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group it really is encouraging to see such capable hands in charge of such an important group, from their website they state their mission as:

The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group exists to provide a discussion forum between new media industries and Parliamentarians for the mutual benefit of both parties. Accordingly, the group considers Internet issues as they affect society informing current Parliamentary debate through meetings, informal receptions and reports. The group is open to all Parliamentarians in both the House of Commons and House of Lords.

So much for living in the first world.

The Rise of the Spammers

I got this pdf via Boing Boing Blog, it is a full account and analysis of a spammer who owned a box via some PHP, Gallery and Geeklog vulnerabilities, installed some processes that tried their best to look like webservers that acted as bulk senders.
What makes this really interesting is the lengths that the spammers goes to in order to get their mail sent, custom written daemons, reporting back to the mother ship and so forth. Also interesting to read this for a view on some real world forensics performed and what looks like a good solid investigation into a compromised box.
This proves to me that the spammers have most definitely taken the fight to the next level and that those combating spam have a long way to go still before the spammers are going to admit defeat.