M3AAWG published a letter to the FCC addressing the implementation of CSRIC III Cybersecurity Best Practices (pdf link)
The takeaway is that of the ISPs that contribute data to M3AAWG (37M+ users), over 99% of infected users receive notification that they are infected.
I hear from senders occasionally that they are not the problem, bots are the problem and why isn’t anyone addressing bots. The answer is that people are addressing the bot problem.
Last week I blogged about the changes at ISPs that make “ISP Relations” harder for many senders. But it’s not just ISPs that are making it a little more difficult to get answers to questions, some spam filtering companies are pulling back on offering support to senders.
For instance, Cloudmark sent out an email to some ESPs late last week informing them that Cloudmark was changing their sender support policies. It’s not that they’re overwhelmed with delisting requests, but rather that many ESPs are asking for specific data about why the mail was blocked. In December, Spamcop informed some ESPs that they would stop providing data to those ESPs about specific blocks and spam trap hits.
These decisions make it harder for ESPs to identify specific customers and lists causing them to get blocked. But I understand why the filtering companies have had to take such a radical step.
Support for senders by filtering companies is a side issue. Their customers are the users of the filtering service and support teams are there to help paying customers. Many of the folks at the filtering companies are good people, though, and they’re willing to help blocked senders and ESPs to figure out the problem.
For them, providing information that helps a company clean up is a win. If an ESP has a spamming customer and the information from the filtering company is helping the ESP force the customer to stop spamming that’s a win and that’s why the filtering companies started providing that data to ESPs.
Unfortunately, there are people who take advantage of the filtering companies. I have dozens of stories about how people are taking advantage of the filtering companies. I won’t share specifics, but the summary is that some people and ESPs ask for the same data over and over and over again. The filtering company rep, in an effort to be helpful and improve the overall email ecosystem, answers their questions and sends the data. In some cases, the ESP acts on the data, the mail stream improves and everyone is happy (except maybe the spammer). In other cases, though, the filtering company sees no change in the mail stream. All the filtering company person gets is yet another request for the same data they sent yesterday.
Repetition is tedious. Repetition is frustrating. Repetition is disheartening. Repetition is annoying.
What we’re seeing from both Spamcop and Cloudmark is the logical result from their reps being tired of dealing with ESPs that aren’t visibly fixing their customer spam problems. Both companies are sending some ESPs to the back of the line when it comes to handling information requests, whether or not those ESPs have actually been part of the problem previously.
The Cloudmark letter makes it clear what they’re frustrated about.
Senders: You’re blocking our mail, why?
Receivers: Because you’re spamming, stop spamming and we won’t block you.
Senders: But we’re not spamming. What do you mean we’re spamming! How could we be spamming, we’re not sending spam!
Receivers: You’re doing all these things (generating complaints, sending to dead accounts, hitting spam traps, not bounce handling, etc) that makes your mail indistinguishable from spam.
Senders: But we can’t tell what we’re doing wrong unless you give us more data!
Receivers: OK, fine. Here are FBLs, postmaster pages, sender access to support people. Now, stop spamming.
time passes
Receivers: It’s costing us how much to provide support to senders?!?! And after years of giving them lots of data it’s still the same problems over and over again? We’re not a charity, we’re going to control our costs and stop providing so much personal support.
And that, readers, is why receivers are pulling back from providing the data they used to.
This time it appears that DNS for major websites, including the NY Times, has been compromised. Attackers put in DNS entries that redirected visitors to a malware site. The compromise has been fixed and the fake DNS entries corrected.
However, people may still have the old data in their DNS caches and security experts are suggesting everyone flush their DNS cache to make sure the fake data is gone.
The Washington Post has an article explaining DNS hijacking.