MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-09-10 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Asian Spam - Die Now
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Not All Asian E-Mail Is Spam By Michelle Delio
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50455,00.html
02:00 AM Feb. 19, 2002 PT
A new great wall is being built, this time across the Internet.
Constructed by frustrated systems administrators and intended only to
stop spam, the wall could eventually cut off much of the e-mail
communications between the East and the West.
Anti-spam activists confirm that a growing number of beleaguered
systems administrators are now blocking all e-mail originating from
Asia from their systems, in an attempt to choke off a flood of spam
from China, Taiwan and Korea, an action that has upset non-spamming
Asian e-mailers.
"Spammers and geeks are managing to do to China's people what the
government has attempted but been unable to do," said Mike Markham, an
English language teacher in Beijing. "We are slowly being cut off from
participating in the most democratic system ever developed -? e-mail."
Many systems administrators and spam-fighters said that apart from
blocking all e-mail from Asian Internet service providers, there
doesn't seem to be any way to stop all the spam originating from or
being routed through Asia's e-mail servers. But they also worry that
the blockades will lead to isolating huge sections of the developing
Internet.
"E-mail as a communication medium is under attack," said Steve Atkins
of anti-spam website Sam Spade. "If an organization discovers that
blocking an entire country will stop a huge amount of spam, it does
make a lot of financial sense for them to do so. But this retreat into
e-mail enclaves also destroys one of the best things about e-mail --
the ability to communicate freely with someone on the other side of the
world, even if it's just a 'Hi from China, I really liked your Web
page.'"
Spam fighters say they have been unsuccessful in their attempts to work
directly with Asian ISPs.
"Complaints to China Telecom, which we estimate receives upward of
50,000 spam complaints per day from Europe and North America, are all
ignored," said Steve Linford, a member of the Spamhaus Project. "China
Telecom's complaints address is auto-answered by a robot message that
replies, 'It's not under our control,' to any message you send."
Blocking the spam-sending ISPs hasn't alleviated all of the problems.
Refusing massive amounts of attempted connections also puts a strain on
servers, in some cases bogging the system down in much the same way as
a sustained denial-of-service attack.
"British ISP UXN found that simply blocking China Telecom wasn't enough
because UXN's mail servers still had to deal with hundreds of
connection requests per minute from Chinese mail servers," Linford
said. "UXN had to actually firewall China Telecom's IP range from
connecting to UXN's mail servers to stop the mass of connections from
clogging UXN's mail service."
"So far the Shanghai-province ISP "online.sh.cn" has responded to us
blocking them by saying simply, "take block off," but is not willing to
do anything to actually get off our blocklist," Linford said.
"Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. are closing the doors fast on China's
IP space, and at the rate this is happening the problem is going to
almost certainly go diplomatic within months."
Julian Haight of Spamcop said he has received e-mail from Asian systems
administrators who take spam seriously, but usually his complaints are
also met with silence. Although he is now implementing selective
blocking through Spamcop, Haight said he cringes at the idea of an
all-out blockade against Asian ISPs.
"It's so closed-minded to just throw up a barrier like that because you
feel like all the mail you get from China is spam," Haight said,
"particularly when users in the U.S. are actually the ones doing most
of it."
While some spam being transmitted by Asian servers appears to be sent
by the locals, Western spammers are exploiting Asian mail servers and
using them to relay mail. Many Asian systems often run old software or
software that hasn't been configured securely or patched properly,
experts say.
Some Chinese and Korean systems administrators said documentation for
the software they use is often available only in English, which
complicates securing their systems.
Cultural issues also contribute to the problem. Many spammers in Asia
say they do not understand why spam is a problem.
"It's a sign of respect that someone sends you an electric business
card. It means he wants you as a customer," said Zhao Peng, owner of a
computer store in Hong Kong.
____________________________
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