RIPE Working Groups

Anti-spam WG RIPE 41 Amsterdam

A Administrivia

Scribe Jeroen Bet, RIPE NCC to whom we are grateful.

About 40 people attended.

B Update

1. Developments in UBE
   • Open proxies -- leave no trace of origin in the mail.
   • DNS hopping -- makes tracing almost impossible.
   • Mainstream advertisers -- more, sometimes disappointed.
   • Patterns of forged originators -- no major change.
2. Developments in anti-spam
   • Port filtering now deployed on many modem dialups. DSL not so good.
   • MAPS RBL+ short of resources but respected. Other DNSBLs in chaos.
     Can we support MAPS in some way?
     (host a nameserver in Europe, encourage subscriptions).
3. Regulation and legislation
   • Californian legislation apparently effective.
   • European legislation now to urge opt-IN.
   • Child protection and UBE.
     In the UK it is now accepted that mail abuse is unsolicited.
4. Products
   • formmail.pl

C Technical measures

1. Filtering
   • Filtering services; Brightmail, finding signatures fast.
     Brightmail-like plugin for Sendmail if MAPS not sustainable?
2. Various kinds of distributed blocklist.
3. Sending mailer validation in real time.
4. Hashcash

D Interactions

1. Marketers
2. Other ISPs
   • Enforcement
   • Mail provider trust model
3. Bulk mailers
4. RIRs

E Advice

1. Update RIPE-206 ( http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/spam.html )
   • Make explicit comment on services supporting UBE.
2. Opt-IN lists (work item)
   • Start with LINX BCP http://www.linx.net/noncore/bcp/mailinglist-bcp.html
3. Reporting UBE
4. RFC 2635, RFC 3098.

Y AOB

1. Privacy of the WG list.
2. Statistics on paths of spam (for 80-20 attack).
3. How would we spend money to fight UBE if we had it?

Z Agenda for RIPE 42

1. Tutorials?
   • How UBE works, How UBE affects ISPs, Reading UBE headers.
     Not thought useful here at present.