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Statement on the problem at Tiscali UK | |||||
 Category: Policy Updated: 2007-06-03 Statement Ref: S06
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The problem at Tiscali (UK) is very serious and is largely due to
zombies on their network. 19,000 zombies, in fact - which have
substantial destructive power. Especially when most of them wake up
in unison and begin sending out spam in waves. Most large commercial broadband networks worldwide are infested with zombies, but less by comparison with Tiscali. In the UK, BT, many times the size of Tiscali, has 18,000 zombies currently and VirginMedia 10,000 - but either of those could do those networks a lot of damage if the spammers chose to activate them to take part in a single attack. The same problem that hit Tiscali could affect all broadband networks and indeed does affect most networks to a degree. But with Tiscali there was a difference. Tiscali management had consistently failed to act on the reports of these Zombies that would have been sent to them by other networks and by anti-spam systems. A high number of Tiscali's zombies had been mailing via the Tiscali smarthosts, targeting users on specific networks, which included AOL. The fast-emerging 'spamming via smarthosts' problem was highlighted by Spamhaus in a 2005 news release entitled "Increasing Spam Threat from Proxy Hijackers" and is a problem we had hoped the industry would have prepared for by now. As the spammers had selected to spam specific networks, Spamhaus would not expect to have seen that spam in our Spamtraps (even if we had, we would not have been able to do much about it. We could not for example have listed those smarthosts in the Spamhaus Block List because that would have generated enormous "false positives" and would not have been in the interests of SBL users). What has made this case so much more difficult is that Tiscali corporate management have in the past been almost totally unresponsive to other networks complaints, and that attitude does lead to blocks being put in place more quickly by those networks that have tried to contact them. When we became aware of the Tiscali problem, Spamhaus CERT - a team of zombie investigators with the right industry contacts to quickly solve such situations - immediately contacted Tiscali and offered help in solving these problems. Spamhaus aims to keep working to establish a rapid network abuse communications channel with Tiscali, and to invite Tiscali to protect themselves via our PBL initiative to stop zombie mailers, and participate in anti-abuse industry workgroups such as MAAWG. |
Case Answer: e360Insight vs. The Spamhaus Project TRO Answer: e360Insight vs. The Spamhaus Project EMarketersAmerica "Anonymous Florida Spammers" lawsuit Statement on the problem at Tiscali UK Spamhaus Position on CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 Fake DNSBL uncovered: nszones.com Report on the criminal 'Rock Phish' domains registered at Nic.at DDoS and Virus Attacks on Spamhaus |
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Copyright © 2007-06-03 The Spamhaus Project Ltd. Reproduction from "Statement on the problem at Tiscali UK" is permitted provided you quote the source as "The Spamhaus Project" and provide a link to the source url: http://www.spamhaus.org/organization/statement.lasso?ref=6 |
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