US Military Looks For Massive Spam Solution 228
Several users have pointed out a recent request to technology companies from the Defense Information System Agency for ideas on how to build an e-mail defense system to catch spam. The solution would have to scan about 50 million inbound messages a day across some 700 unclassified network domains. "Defense currently scans e-mails for viruses and spam coming into systems serving the military services, commands or units. DISA wants to extend the protection to the interface between the Internet and its unclassified network, the Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network. The agency also wants the ability to scan all outbound e-mails from the 5 million users. [...] DISA's request ties in with recommendations that the Defense Science Board issued in April that said Defense is more vulnerable to cyberattacks because of its decentralized networks and systems. The board envisioned a major role for DISA in developing the architecture for enterprise-wide systems."
Only one way to be sure (Score:5, Funny)
Nuke spammers from orbit.
Ten dollar tent (Score:3, Funny)
The military?! (Score:4, Funny)
Great, and then there will be secret abductions of spammers who are sent to Guantanamo without trial or hope of quick appeal. There will be water boarding and sleep deprivation and acts of humiliation.
Really, I think that my point is that it's not severe enough.
Unclassified? (Score:3, Funny)
The US Military already has a solution. (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't it be nice? (Score:5, Funny)
For this rare instance I would certainly condone a few black ops. Find the people who are responsible, capture them, torture them and if they are bad enough, kill them. When there is money involved, it should be trivial to follow that money back to the people who collect it.
This also gives me a great idea for a movie sequel to "Taken." '...I have a very special set of skills... I will find you and I will kill you.' '//good luck//'
Yeah, I would totally watch that...
Obligatory checklist (Score:5, Funny)
The Defense Information Systems Agency advocates a
(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. The idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to this particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(X) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
(X) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
(X) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(X) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to this are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
(X) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
(X) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatibility with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(X) I don't want the government reading my email
(X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about them:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and they're stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Re:Why bother with an IT solution? (Score:1, Funny)
Since you cannot be bothered to look it up yourself, here is the source [wikipedia.org].
Echelon (Score:5, Funny)
Change the word table from:
"Bomb", "Terrorist", etc...
to
"Penis", "Pen1s", etc...
then
Give Chuck Norris a call.
Re:Bounce confirmation whitelist (Score:1, Funny)
What you're referring to is called [a href=http://www.greylisting.org/]greylisting[/a]
Re:Why bother with an IT solution? (Score:3, Funny)
To go a step further, what happens if it can be determined that the spammers are enemy combatants waging war against the United States infrastructure?
In other news today, US Military Drones attacked 200 hundred spam headquarters in coordinated action last night. Anti-war protestors took the streets by the thousands to show their support...
Re:Only one way to be sure (Score:5, Funny)
Spammers can send, literally, infinite numbers of spam messages
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
-1
In discussions about very large numbers, "infinite" can be applied to numbers so large they might as well be infinite.
Re:Why bother with an IT solution? (Score:5, Funny)
Only 200? I buy 50 round boxes of 9mm for about $12/box. Spam is a problem that could be solved for $50.
Re:Only one way to be sure (Score:3, Funny)
2. Rendition them to afghanistan
3. ?
4. Profit.