Taking Common Action

Slide 1:Taking Common Action Against Spam Internet Society of China Beijing � 2004 Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://brandenburg.com/current.html>

Slide 2:Setting the Context

Slide 3:A Personal Perspective Spam is a complex social problem Technical solutions must follow the social decisions The situation is getting much worse, very quickly It is like moving from a safe, small town to a big (U.S.) city Spam is created in one country, and sent out from another And no technique has yet reduced global spam! Spam is a global problem On the Internet, every place is a close neighbor We can only control it by taking common action

Slide 4:Wheel of Spam (Mis)Fortune Control of spam Techniques are not precise We must balance the facets Need many partial solutions Heuristics to consider Long lists ? Complicated Complicated ? Be careful!

Slide 5:Formulating Proposals Spammers �Accountable� Legitimate businesses with aggressive marketing Need rules to constrain �Rogue� Avoid accountability Same as criminal virus and worm attackers Pragmatic Approach Specify: Type of targeted spam How it is occurring How the mechanism will fix the problem Explore how mechanism can fail

Slide 6:A List of Common Suggestions Initial suggestions from the anti-spam community Most are useful for providers and countries everywhere We need a venue for forming on-going agreements Categories Legal: Formal boundaries and consequences Accountability: For whitelisting(!) Administrative: Organization commitment and efficiency Collaboration: Adapt and respond to changes Operations: Tools for responding

Slide 7:Legal and Political Provide government assistance and oversight Treat spam as a common international and national emergency This requires a commitment by both government and operators Formulate Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) Create legal procedures to disconnect spammers Specify serious consequences for violating AUP

Slide 8:Accountability rDNS (in-addr.arpa) Maintain IP address-to-name mappings for all visible addresses Map to �useful� domain names WHOIS information Maintain accurate entries Indirect spam referencing via �landing hosts� Lines of accountability to owner of the host

Slide 9:Organizational and Administrative Organization Structure Use a unique ASN for each provincial "branch" Create central authority to assist province administrators who provide direct policy enforcement Network Structure Separate dynamic and static IP's Staff Support Province/Network administrators must have authority to terminate quickly Give them tools and training for disconnecting spammers

Slide 10:Collaboration Among Providers Global Create RFC-2142 addresses; register with abuse.net Act on complaints made to abuse addresses Forum for international sharing of methods and information Government and operator participation in APCauce, SPAM-L, NANAE, etc. National Forum for Province administrators Create a Chinese anti-spam site to help non-Chinese users report spam involving China

Slide 11:Operations Prevention Create a list of IP Address blocks that are run by anti-spam ISPs, to permit whitelisting(!) Certify, block or rate-limit outbound SMTP for all hosts Detection Monitor traffic flows for �spikes� Check outbound mail for viruses Response Create response-time targets (< 24 hours) Responses in English would be nice

Slide 12:A Direction for Collaboration? Safe Internet service requires collaboration among providers. We need a venue for collaborative development, assistance, monitoring and reporting of safe operational practices.

Slide 13:Summary Spam is a complicated probem It needs to be treated with all due respect Spam is a universal problem Fighting it requires global common action Spam is an urgent problem We must attack it together� now! Xie Xie