[Mimedefang] FTC asks ISPs to crack down on zombie PCs

[James Ebright]

On Wed, 25 May 2005 14:41:52 -0500 (CDT), Ian Mitchell wrote

> Privacy. TLS encryption from MTA to MTA through the ISP is a good example.

You can still run your own MTA, just it should forward all outbound mail to
the ISP MTA and not attempt any direct to MTA deliveries. If you have TLS
setup and your ISP has TLS capabilities it will remained encryted the entire
way, it will even remain encrypted if the recieving end has TLS too, if the
recieving end doesnt then you dont loose anything cause your own MTA woudl
have dropped it as well (the encryption that is).

> And as for hiding. There's not much hiding involved. 

You need to rewrite the envelope if you do not have your own domain, if you do
then you just need to make sure your MX is your MTA, simple.

> Further more, 
> the ISP keeps logs (or atleast they SAY they do) of all the IP's 
> assigned via DHCP. 

They do and it is probably in radius logs, not DHCP, they are actually
required to keep them for a period of time, I have the last 3 months here on
the live filesystem and have ALL of them archived. I have had cases where the
FBI or local SBI subpeonaed our records to find out what customer was on a
certain IP address at a given time.

> So there's not much hiding involved. 

You cannot hide from your ISP, they know who you are.... ;-)

> Now, if 25 inbound was shut down (which I could see an 
> ISP doing) then I would seriously be in trouble because there'd be 
> no inbound email any longer.

Why would an ISP shutdown port 25 inbound? I see no logical reason to do so,
spam does not get delivered directly to a users desktop (at this time at
least). The zombies are not controlled via port 25 inbound (at least any I
have seen). In other words, I know of no good reason to shutdown port 25
inbound... now port 25 outbound, yes, definately for dynamic IP space.


Jim

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