Re: Handling spam on gnu.org mailing lists

[D. Stimits]

Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> I think the gnu.org -bug lists should be open to all comers.  -bug lists
> are by nature high-noise, and people who can't deal with a bit of spam
> aren't going to be able to deal with the truckloads of poorly specified
> and mostly unusable bug reports either.
> 
> As for working mailing lists such as this one, the gcc mailing lists have
> adopted the interesting strategy of letting through all posts by
> subscribers and then letting through any messages from non-subscribers
> *if* they pass fairly aggressive blackhole lists.  While this has caused
> occasional problems, it seems fairly effective, and it's trivial to work
> around without changing ISPs (which can be a major hardship for some
> people).  I think it's a useful compromise.
> 
> --
> Russ Allbery (address@hidden)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Unfortunately, the main and largest spam is only relayed through
gnu.org, after automated mining of subscribers to the list (take a look
at the full header of a few spam emails, you'll find many contain the
gnu.org). It is only on occasion that spam actually goes TO the gnu.org
lists, which really isn't a big problem; but a HUGE amount of spam,
including illegal offers and MALICIOUS PAYLOADS (I verified this through
cert.org) are delivered BY gnu.org. As a sample, I am pasting below an
excerpt from one such spammer that I recently had removed from Yahoo;
take note that the "Sender" is address@hidden (start viewing
full headers of spam email if you are a gnu.org list subscriber, you
will see a number of items very similar to this excerpt):

Return-Path: 
                         <address@hidden>
                Received: 
                         from fencepost.gnu.org (fencepost.gnu.org
[199.232.76.164]) by
                         brainstem.idcomm.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP
id JAA07204 for
                         <address@hidden>; Tue, 27 Mar 2001 09:39:24
-0700
                Received: 
                         from localhost ([127.0.0.1]
helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp
                         (Exim 3.16 #1 (Debian)) id 14hvYp-0004GK-00;
Tue, 27 Mar 2001 10:39:07 -0500
                Received: 
                         from web11107.mail.yahoo.com
([216.136.131.154]) by fencepost.gnu.org with smtp
                         (Exim 3.16 #1 (Debian)) id 14hvWv-0004Cm-00 for
<address@hidden>; Tue, 27
                         Mar 2001 10:37:09 -0500
              Message-ID: 
                        
<address@hidden>
                Received: 
                         from [63.103.141.158] by
web11107.mail.yahoo.com; Tue, 27 Mar 2001 07:37:08 PST
                    From: 
                         sato nasir <address@hidden>
                  Subject: 
                         URGENT INVESTMENT PURPOSE
                      To: 
                         address@hidden

                  Sender: 
                         address@hidden
                Errors-To: 
                         address@hidden
             X-BeenThere: 
                         address@hidden
        X-Mailman-Version: 
                         2.0.3
              Precedence: 
                         bulk
                List-Help: 
                         <mailto:address@hidden>
                List-Post: 
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                    Date: 
                         Tue, 27 Mar 2001 07:37:08 -0800 (PST)