From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Feb 11 18:18: 0 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4694A37B401 for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 18:17:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from vador.skynet.be (vador.skynet.be [195.238.3.236]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7B73A43F85 for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 18:17:57 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from brad.knowles@skynet.be) Received: from [10.0.1.2] (ip-26.shub-internet.org [194.78.144.26] (may be forged)) by vador.skynet.be (8.12.7/8.12.7/Skynet-OUT-2.21) with ESMTP id h1C2HXPa003145; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 03:17:48 +0100 (MET) (envelope-from ) Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: bs663385@pop.skynet.be Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20030211144057.GA2382@papagena.rockefeller.edu> References: <20030211032932.GA1253@papagena.rockefeller.edu> <20030211144057.GA2382@papagena.rockefeller.edu> Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 02:13:01 +0100 To: Rahul Siddharthan From: Brad Knowles Subject: Re: Email push and pull (was Re: matthew dillon) Cc: Brad Knowles , freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org At 9:40 AM -0500 2003/02/11, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > But I can now block known spammers from even trying to connect, > because they can no longer relay their mail and thus can't hide their > tracks. Not true. They could create messages to be picked up anywhere in the world, and then bombard you with notices every second. There has to be an additional level of authentication built into that system which is not typically present in mail systems today. Moreover, not only do you need to have virtually unbreakable proof between the client and the system, you also need to have virtually unbreakable proof between the system and the recipient. Both are easily subverted. Moreover, if we had this level of authentication built into the existing mail system, we could improve a lot more things a lot faster than by trying to completely change how e-mail works across the entire Internet. > Equally important, the law can catch up with the spammers because they > can't hide their tracks. Again, not true. See above. This proposal *may* create a situation where this sort of thing might exist, but there's a lot more that would need to be added before you could be virtually certain. > One way to transition to a new system would be for mailservers to > support both systems for a while, and indicate their support by their > HELO greeting. Perhaps some indication can also be put in the MX > records. Synchronous meta-data updates are the #1 kill for most mail systems today. You don't improve this situation by making the messages/notices smaller, more frequent, and then tacking on a secondary transmission channel. I would have thought people would have learned their lesson with ftp. > Once a new system is in place, and supported by the big guys (sendmail > and Microsoft would be enough), I suspect transition would be pretty > fast. Not true. First off, Microsoft would never support the same standard as everyone else, unless everyone else adopted the Microsoft standard. Thinking about this some more, you're basically talking about single-instance message store, a topic that Nick and I discussed in depth for my talk at LISA 2000. This is fundamentally unscalable, and places many orders of magnitude more requirements for reliability on the system than are in place today. > Look how quickly the world got rid of open relays: back in 1996 > nearly every mail server was an open relay, now the spammers have a > hard time finding one. Not at all. The number of open relays may be going down, but spammers can still easily find enough to do the damage, and that's for the people that actually subscribe to the appropriate open-relay blacklists. -- Brad Knowles, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania. GCS/IT d+(-) s:+(++)>: a C++(+++)$ UMBSHI++++$ P+>++ L+ !E-(---) W+++(--) N+ !w--- O- M++ V PS++(+++) PE- Y+(++) PGP>+++ t+(+++) 5++(+++) X++(+++) R+(+++) tv+(+++) b+(++++) DI+(++++) D+(++) G+(++++) e++>++++ h--- r---(+++)* z(+++) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message