Russia, China World's Biggest Spammers 435
An anonymous reader writes "According to this ZDNet article, The Spamhaus Project has warned that organised cirminal gangs in Russia are supplying U.S.-based spammers with details of compromised PCs that can be manipulated to send junk mail. According to Spamhaus director Steve Linford, the Russian gangs aren't constrained by any anti-spam or cybercrime laws in their home country and have no respect for legislation implemented in other countries. Also, apparently 70 percent of spam is sent from China by American spam outfits who in turn have hosting arrangements with Chinese ISPs."
What is the best way to stop this? (Score:5, Insightful)
User end filters are a necessity these days, and even then, I still spend at least 15 min each day dealing with the spam. My personal box - No One else knows the address, it is for my own internal network purposes, is chock full of the stuff.
What do other slashdot'ers do? What can we hope to see in the near future?
70% from US? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does this remind me of illegal drugs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Evil Russian spammers! Chinese spammers want to take down America!
And yet, in both cases there is plenty of demand from within the States. If it ain't rich kids experimenting, it's poor kids escaping with drugs from South America or Asia. If it's not a "bulk emailer" in California, it's a "clever marketer" in Florida sending millions of unsolicited email via servers in Russia or China.
Well, technically (Score:5, Insightful)
That title is wrong.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is the best way to stop this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Due to the global nature of the internet, the only way is to wait until the governments of China and Russia change due to public, internal pressure. Note that this may take some time.
In the meantime, SpamBayes [sourceforge.net] might help.
Conflicting stories (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? That contradicts this story [slashdot.org] posted just two days ago:
The Register is reporting a study by Sandvine.com that blames Microsoft Zombies for 80% of all spam.
So which is it, then?
Re:Solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
or 2. people could just stop reading it and buying the junk.
i would rather my first solution happens, because as a side effect there wouldnt be any more assholes. number two wont happen, because sometimes you just want to see if it really will make your junk bigger. your idea is GREAT, but... i dont really know what the new paradigm would be.
X% of Spam is caused by This (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Conflicting stories (Score:2, Insightful)
Who says it can't be both?
New laws (Score:3, Insightful)
Well I think I have a possible solution and it can be illustrated by a case study. In Australia we had an international Paedophilia problem, Paedophiles were travelling to countries like Thailand where sex with children was not illegal and thus were not getting arrested. The solution that was eventually found was new laws whereby anyone who broke Australia's anti-paedophile laws could be arrested no matter where the offence was enacted. Offenders were met at the airport by police and arrested for crimes in other countries and the problem of "paedophile sex tourism" was solved.
My Solution to spam is similar. The USA needs to pass laws allowing them to track down the companies and individuals that are using the Chinese spam services and arrest them. Make the law such that sending spam is illegal no matter which country it is sent from. The spammers might get so scared they will stop Spamming
Re:70% from US? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps. But the solution is still in Russia and/or China.
The Russian mafia (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is the best way to stop this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Conflicting stories (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is the best way to stop this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I currently sit in the "email itself must change" camp to fix the problem of SPAM. Of course its an impractical camp to sit in at the moment, but things are moving along slowly.
I can't see that addressing the problem of SPAM on an international law basis is going to yield any results in the near and not so near future.
Just random opinions on my part...
Re:What is the best way to stop this? (Score:5, Insightful)
90% or more of all SPAM advertises a product or service in the USA. While it may be difficult to track the spammer, it should be simple for law enforcement agencies to track down the actual advertiser.
I cannot imagine one would not be able to find the guy who offers you a low-interest mortgage, for example. Make him go out of business. Then his competitors will no longer spam.
Same for the sale of unlicensed health products.
Re:70% from US? (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying that the solution to spam is only in Russia and/or China is like saying that the solution to the war on drugs (as stupid as that is) is only in Colombia, etc.
Re:What is the best way to stop this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fact is if I look at my inbox - something like 95 % of all Spam promote questionable american products, 2-3 % is in russian so I don't even know what it promotes - and I have yet to see ONE spam mail that actually try to sell a Chinese product.
Re:New laws (Score:5, Insightful)
With all due respect, it would make sense to you if you had sense.
We have a ton of spam laws already. Passing more laws doesn't change a damn thing. Almost all spammers are already breaking numerous laws, criminal felonies involving computer tampering are just the start. In fact, the USA Patriot act could even be employed to consider the activities of most spammers to be terrorism and thus subject spammers to capital punishment. What more do you need? The problem isn't more laws. The problem is.... say it with me.....
E N F O R C E M E N T
Our law enforcement branches are more interested in going after people downloading Metallica or Martha Stewart's stock dealings than they are enforcing the plethora of violations done by spammers. Passing more laws has not proved effective.
Re:NEXT! (Score:4, Insightful)
The source of the spam is ultimately in the United States. Using a foreign network to route spam serves to make the spammers harder to track and catch, but not impossible. The truth is, most of the largest spammers are easily trackable and can likely be proven guilty of numerous laws, whether they use foreign servers or not. The problem is it's a very low priority for law enforcement authorities unless, for example, the spammers mailbomb The GAP or Macdonald's company headquarters... then there'd be hell to pay.
Another problem is District Attorneys in most states in the United States have no interest in prosecuting spammers. Either they are ignorant or apathetic, but numerous spammer criminal cases have been presented to authorities for prosecution only to have them turned down.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
At my last job, I adminned machines in Seoul. 95% or more of the spam was pure Korean, targeting Koreans.
The spammers know their audiences, and target accordingly. The other-language spam you get is errors.
Wrong headline (Score:5, Insightful)
PS "cirminal": Jesus, Timothy, you're actually paid to edit this?
Re:NEXT! (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The spam obviously has to have a link back to the vendor in order to make sales.
2) If there is no demand for it, spam will stop.
Re:Well, technically (Score:3, Insightful)
If Americans thought the same way about guns, they'd ban them. But they say "guns don't kill, people kill". Spam relays don't spam, people (most of them Americans) spam.
Re:Give users the power to block countries... (Score:5, Insightful)
The "70%" figure mentioned earlir on refers to the percentage of url embedded in the spam (e.g. the store for the V1a4Ga) that uses an IP from China... If you manage to instruct your spam filter to read inside the email main body, you may have a solution.
On the other hand, I don't think it will be a long lasting solution.... If spammers can send spam thru compromised machine, they should be able to web host their site thru a compromised machine...
Re:What is the best way to stop this? (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a fundamental problem with email (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What is the best way to stop this? (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate it when people like you try to split the internet in to parts, "clients" and "servers". The great thing is that everyone can be both client and server! Let's not change this!
Additionally, this measure achieves virtually nothing. Port numbers can be changed; and opening a connection to port 25 is still the normal way to send e-mail.
"click here" domains (Score:3, Insightful)
Current List of Domains [icarusindie.com]
At the time of this posting it's at 2209 domains. In a day or so it should go up several dozen when I do an update.
It's the only thing in a spam that can't be obfuscated or it simply won't work. At best they can do one to one character codes. Occasionally a spammer will try to be clever and request the user copy and paste the link into their browser. I tend to catch those when I examine what got through but the pay off from those is probably so low that the spammer goes back to links. It's hard enough to get someone to click.
The other advantages of blocking based on click-me domains is that the header is irrelavent (it doesn't matter where it came from) and that it's the only thing that costs the spammer real money. And it's the only thing guarenteed not to be in a legitimate e-mail ever.
I've gotten several occuraces of dictionary words inbetween the same obvious spam domain entry. It's quite simple to see which are the filler to fool fully automated anti-spam systems and which are the real links.
The long and shot of it is that if you can use it, so can spammers. Charging thousands for a
You have to deal with spam within the rules that spammers set. You can't invent rules and then pretend spammers are going to follow them. After an update it takes a few days for the spam to pick up again. If major players would stop worrying about where spam was coming from and start dealing with where it's pointing to, this problem would be a lot more managable.
I've started sending my hotmail spam off to my mail server to help build the filter. It'd be nice if other people were building reliable lists so that I could premptively filter more domains. Nobody really takes it seriously though. They'd rather blacklist countries since it's "easy."
Ben
Re:What is the best way to stop this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Blocking port 25 is a very short sighted approach by the people that cry for this. Just because these people don't want to run their own legitimate mail server shouldn't mean that others are denied the right.
The point of having the right to control one's own privacy policy on mail seems to go right over the heads of people who cry port blocking as a solution.
Re:70% from US? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only that, what about the organised cirminal gangs in Russia
followed by: the Russian gangs aren't constrained by any anti-spam or cybercrime laws in their home country
So what makes them criminals exactly, if what they do is legal? Just because it's illegal in the US, you can't start calling people in other countries criminals. I mean, they are probably right, but just based on the information provided is plain crazy.
And then this and have no respect for legislation implemented in other countries
Why the fuck should they?! Like the US respects every freaking legislation in the world. I can tell you one thing, there's plenty of US legislation that I don't respect.
Spam does not come from Russia or China. It comes from the sleazebags in the US that pay these people to distribute it.
I don't know how often it must be said: follow the freaking money. It's US companies/people paying for it, and it's largely US people buying this shit, which keeps it profitable.
US biggest Spammer!!!!!!!! (Score:0, Insightful)
"70 percent of spam is sent from China by American spam outfits"
The same scheme over and over again! Stick your homophobia somewhere and keep to the facts. Unless the US cleans up its act wrt to spam nobody will get a significant relief from spam.
Grumble,
*t
Re:What is the best way to stop this? (Score:5, Insightful)
This idea seems so obvious, and so potentially effective. So why won't the governments (or whoever else has the authority to do so) do this?
What I'm guessing contributes to it is two simple facts.
The first I'm guessing in itself is only a very small factor. But when a billion-selling company pays its taxes, then you want to be very sure they're not legit before pulling the plug or slapping them with hefty fines.
The main problem is the second. A great deal of mail is easily flagged as Spam. A great deal of mail (including some advertising) is definitely legit. The difficulty is that there is also mail all across the scale.
Too relaxed and you don't block enough Spam, people still complain, and there's enough leeway for the Spammers to adjust tactics to stay in the "grey areas".
Too restrictive and you run the risk of arresting/fining/whatever people who were sending mail that in that case was totally legit. And in the current knee-jerk sue-em mentality, that could be a bad move to make.
You could make it illegal to advertise certain product types over the internet, but again this could easily meet corporate resistance.
Now banning advertising would be cool. But that's only in my personal opinion, and highly unlikely to ever happen. Besides, even I understand that sometimes advertising revenue is important - even though I perosnally hate seeing adverts anywhere I go.
I guess that the Follow the Money idea is one that although would be the msot effective, is also the one with the biggest legal minefield.
TiggsOh get off it (Score:4, Insightful)
This does NOT mean that the domestic spammers are being ignored. One has already been convicted, Microsoft and Time Warner are suing a bunch more, and the justice department says it is prepping 50 criminal cases under teh new SPAM law. This was all announced on
Quit with the anti-American bullshit. Yep, the problem is here. We know, we finally have a law for it, though not as strong as we'd like, and the wheels are in motion. Doesn't mean that the US is solely responsible. I do not at all think it is unreasonable that Chinese hosts should show the same standards demanded of US hosts in not hosting SPAM sites.
Re:eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
But people are banning entire countries, not ISPs. That leaves those who live there no reason to choose a "good" ISP over a spam haven; all are discriminated against. If you're going to be punished for living in the same country as spammers you might a well get the benefit from using a service subsidised by them.
Re:My new spam fighting techniques. (Score:3, Insightful)
Firstly, thanks for the info. Helps a lot. Also gives me a few ideas. (Though probably not anything that hasn't already been considered before)
Maybe the next round of SMTP RFCs should require at require at least something to be given in the HELO/EHLO command. Depending on how strict the RFC requirements were you could then easily block on the criteria you supplied above.
Certainly if you reject at the level of RFC requirements then any corporation or individual complaining that their legitimate mail got rejected can then be told that their server breaks the published standards. (Yes, I know that RFCs are more suggestions than had requirements, but they are the closest we have to de facto standards for the various protocols)
Also if it was part of the RFC, then there would be more pressure for software-houses and ISPs to have the Windows-based servers set up to respond properly.
What would help (and would be nice) was if ISPs would allows RDNS records for those that request them for no extra charge. So then you could easily reject on the fourth (or fifth) item in the list. Especially if it was opt-in only, then anyone sending directly from their machine legitimate would have a valid RDNS entry.
People sending directly from machines without RDNS entries are more likely to be either compromised boxes or people trying not to get caught. And if it was free to get your IP address an RDNS entry from your ISP then it would reduce the legitimate reasons for people not wanting to get one.
It wouldn't catch everything, but it'd at least make it harder to send anything unofficially. And provide a way of directly identifying any server that sent you stuff you didn't want.
TiggsRe:70% from US? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the second worst spammer in the world can appear on a chat-show to talk about their activities, then the US isn't exactly a hostile environment for such people...
Re:What is the best way to stop this? (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of the people that hire "bulk e-mail advertisers" to market their business have no idea that they're spamming until people start to complain.
Re:eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
"In your SPAM eMail,I can't find the IP or the IP is not by my control.Please give me the correct IP.Thank you."
it's no wonder china is one of the most regularly firewalled networks. besides them being a spam haven, their _official policy_ regarding abuse is to do nothing at all, and lie about it!
so really, in china there really aren't any "good networks". they are _all_ bad.
as for banning korea etc. well, i have absolutely zero reason to receive email from anyone in korea nor do i read korean. so into the bin goes *.kr. how exactly does that hurt any koreans?
answer: it doesn't.
A simple Question... (Score:5, Insightful)
After all if the source of the spammers income dwindles then they wither. Perhaps I'm being overly simplistic.
..and speaking of headlines (Score:3, Insightful)
I know I'm repeating myself, but, we have to make sure that headline appears in the "mainstream" media, not just in places that only us geeks look.
Joe 6 pack needs to be routinely reminded that "spammers=criminals", and "buying from spammers=giving money to the Russian Maffia".
I think those of us who are familliar with the problem, need to take the initiative to contact our local media and help them understand what's going on. Lay it out for them: virusses -> zombie PCs -> mail relays -> spam -> criminal gangs.
And then repeat to make sure they get it: "Aunt matilda's computer is being used to make Big Money for the russian maffia.", and "buying from spammers finances the creation of more virusses".
The fewer people who buy from spammers, the less spammers can afford to stay in business. Shout it from the rooftops.
ISPs are a major part of the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
ISPs are a major part of the problem. They either know, or can know, that they have spammers and other criminals on board. Yet many do nothing about this because they would rather have the money spammers pay them. We need to stop peering with bad ISPs in every way we can.
Those who whine about their mail not getting through because they are using one of these bad ISPs are also part of the problem. They need to stop encouraging their ISP to continue, and force the ISP to decide between good and evil. If there's another ISP, switch. If there's only one and it's because the government gives them a monopoly, then the government is the problem and they need to fix that. If there's only one and it's not a monopoly, then they need to start their own ISP (and not allow spammers, lest they also be cast into the deep pink cyber oblivion).
Re:Columbian cartels (Score:3, Insightful)
There will always be spam (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, this is the first time in the history of the world that a company, legit or not, could advertise their products and services for free. Every other method costs a hell of a lot more money and doesn't reach nearly the same audience. Be it paid tv advertising, direct mail, etc.
As long as email is free to send, boxes will always be full of spam. Spam will be the end of email, the problem is only getting worse, with no real hope in sight.
Re:What is the best way to stop this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Since when is the difference between residential service and business service defined by which TCP ports we use? Spreading FUD about port 25 and outright lies about how it will reduce spam is leaning towards this sort of model.
Why does it say "china and russia" (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the lack of respect for US spam policy does not help the situation - but this is not surprising, given that the unstated rule of almost all American policy is "If you have enough money you can get away with whatever you like". (Note that this isn't "If you give me enough
Selling junk to idiots, America's number one industry.