[Mailman-Users] List spam

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 29 Nov 2000 14:07:40 +0000 
Nigel Metheringham <Nigel.Metheringham at VData.co.uk> wrote:

> Is this list running open, or are people subscribing and then
> spamming?  If the latter, is it looking as though someone has
> written a Mailman list sub/spam bot, and what can we do to combat
> this?

I have fairly strong evidence that someome (or several someones)
have already written a generic list server spam bot.  Its a pretty
simple task when you get down to it:

  -- Obtain email address.
  -- Spam list server with subscribe message (all the common formats)
  -- Look for inbound message which talks about "confirm", has what
     looks like an MD auth string, or which contains an URL which
     points at the list's domain.
  -- Bounce said message back to From:/Reply-To and run wget on URL.
  -- Send spam message.

30 minutes for a half-way competant script kiddie?

-- 
J C Lawrence                                       claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                        : http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--