Recovering the Slums of the Internet? 218
turtleshadow writes "Brian Krebs of the Security Fix Blog analyzes the McColo Spamming one year later and asks an interesting question: 'How does one renovate and recoup the lost trust to the slums of the Internet and reclaim back all the domains and IPs that have been blacklisted?' Indeed, the economic benefits abound when a huge swath of illegal and annoying activity ceases — but given the basic design of the Internet, what happens over the long run to IP space and DNS when hosting companies come and go and vary in their trustworthiness? So too, now Geocities is dead [as a business], but does that still live in your filter list? It still appears in OpenDNS under several policy categories. How, in a few years, will I tell if some Hosting/Colo sold me Whitechapel Road/Ventura Avenue for Mayfair/Boardwalk prices, and no one is going to accept my mail from a former slum? When do you, if ever, roll back the blacklists and filters for 'dead' threats and spammers?"
I like the Ras Al Gul approach (Score:1, Funny)
Burn them to the ground.
OMG WTF PONNIES!!! (Score:2, Funny)
OMG WTF PONNIES!!!
What slums? (Score:3, Funny)
I thought they'd switched off geocities already?
Re:who's on first? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Easy solution: (Score:1, Funny)
Stop relying on blacklists as your primarily (or only!) filtering mechanism. There are far more sophisticated filtering solutions out there these days. Filtering based solely on blacklists is antiquated, ineffective, and vulnerable to massive issues with false positives. If you only use blacklisting as a very small part of your overall filter scoring, you won't have problems when the IPs in question get turned over to non-spammers. Sure, they'll still end up with a non-zero "spam" score, but not a high enough one to be blocked.
And, of course, you should regularly be looking at your entire setup, including filtering, on a regular basis to make sure the solution you have is still the best one for your situation. Technology, and the Internet, changes too rapidly to take a "set and forget" attitude toward anything, especially filtering.
Ok, thanks mom. I will do that from now on.
90 percent of blacklists are crap... (Score:5, Funny)
...because 90 percent of everything is crap.
> So too, now Geocities is dead [as a business], but does that still live in your filter list? It still appears in OpenDNS under several policy categories.
If you filter via OpenDNS, then you get what you deserve.
If you've done *any* metamoderating of OpenDNS website classifications, you will soon decide that poo flinging chimpanzees are more accurate.
I came, I saw, I ran away screaming.
--
BMO
Re:Solution (Score:5, Funny)
Simple. Do not call your web site goatse, or geocities. If someone registers that domain name, because he's too young to remember, or whatever... He'll figure out pretty quickly that things don't work for him, so he'll pick a different domain name, like goatsrus, geotowns, geomegacities, or whatever.
Frankly, I think that there are more pressing problems to think about.
Re:Obligatory grammar nazi (Score:5, Funny)
I once passed a shop offering "Sandwich boxe's". I call it hedge-your-bets punctuation...
Re:How does one renovate and recoup the lost trust (Score:5, Funny)
You don't. The Internet never forgets, never forgives.
Never sleeps either. The internet waits.
Re:Solution (Score:3, Funny)
Simple. Do not call your web site goatse, or geocities. If someone registers that domain name, because he's too young to remember, or whatever... He'll figure out pretty quickly that things don't work for him, so he'll pick a different domain name, like goatsrus, geotowns, geomegacities, or whatever.
I'm going to start a free hosting service for shock sites called Goatsecities...
Re:4chan (Score:3, Funny)
/b/ is the fist thing that came to my mind as well
Re:What slums? (Score:3, Funny)
What filter rules? I mean, okay, that light on dark text and background midi and blinking marquees were annoying, but still, you could just not visit...
Re:Easy solution: (Score:2, Funny)
aEN
Re:Solution (Score:3, Funny)
Re:who's on first? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:4chan (Score:5, Funny)
Mod parent +5,000, Insightful.
You missed your chance, dude. You should have said: Mod parent over 9000, Insightful.
Re:What slums? (Score:3, Funny)
Well, it still wouldn't hurt their reputation as badly as if they'd called it Bio-Dome [imdb.com].
Re:who's on first? (Score:4, Funny)
You see porn is bad. Because it has naked people in it pretending to have sex. Which is bad because sex isn't fun, its a terrible thing that must be endured for the betterment of society. Or something. I dunno, don't ask me hard questions. Its in the bible, right after god said to go forth and multiply...
Sex = bad! Stop questioning things!
Re:Solution (Score:2, Funny)