Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 11:40:37 -0800 From: Gregory Sutter <gsutter@pobox.com> To: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: [im@witzend.nu: [spamtools] ORBS is going away] Message-ID: <19981130114037.D9784@orcrist.mediacity.com>
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Folks, It looks like ORBS is having some real problems. It would really be shameful if one telco was allowed to punish the entire net... ----- Forwarded message from Alan Hodgson <im@witzend.nu> ----- Message-ID: <19981130111709.07195@simkin.com> Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 11:17:09 -0800 From: Alan Hodgson <im@witzend.nu> To: spamtools@abuse.net Subject: [spamtools] ORBS is going away X-PGP-Key: https://www.simkin.com/ahodgson.asc It is with sincere regret that I am forced to announce the demise of the dorkslayers.com Open Relay Blocking System (ORBS). My upstream provider, BC Tel (the local phone company), has decided that the mechanism ORBS uses to test open relays (ie. one or a few small relay tests) constitutes, without prior agreement from the the site to be tested, Network Abuse. As such, ORBS is now unwelcome anywhere on BC Tel's backbone. You may write abuse@bctel.net to comment on this position, if you'd like. Obviously ORBS cannot function if I have to receive approval from each site prior to testing them. At least, that's what BC Tel claims their demand for killing ORBS is based on (personally, I think they just don't like having to answer the odd abuse complaint; they can't actually be that ignorant). Unfortunately, through predatory pricing and other phone-companyish techniques, BC Tel provides the sole connectivity to 80-90% of the ISP's here in Vancouver. This includes _all_ the local ISP's who I have contacts with and who would be willing to host ORBS, as well as my employer, who has asked me to remove ORBS from their network due to BC Tel's demands (and some legal concerns due to our relationship). As such, without actually paying for a co-locate or bandwidth contact, ORBS is now not able to live in Vancouver. I am not prepared to make that financial commitment to ORBS. I have known that my employer wishes ORBS gone for some time. I had co-located a server with another ISP and was moving the final pieces of ORBS to them this weekend when I found out the extent of BC Tel's objection to ORBS. As I did not wish to get the new ISP into a fight with BC Tel over a non-paying customer, I cancelled the move (most of their employees are ex-coworkers from a previous job). A site I had previously arranged a home with does not receive connectivity from BC Tel, but the guy I knew there left at an inopportune moment. He and I actually jointly built the server that is now installed at the latest ISP who, unfortunately, does receive connectivity from BC Tel. It's been a stressful 6 weeks, put it that way. Anyway, unless BC Tel changes their mind in the near future, or an ISP in Vancouver who does not receive connectivity from BC Tel offers to provide ORBS with a free home, ORBS is dead. The web site will disappear today. The DNS zone will be emptied today and the zone will completely disappear in the near future. I strongly recommend that you disable ORBS in your MTA and local configurations as soon as possible to avoid any potential problems. Those of you who provide official slave sites for ORBS, please don't disable the zone for at least 2 weeks. I'll try to get in touch with you before then to arrange disposition of the zone. If anyone wishes to take over ORBS I will happily provide them with the database, web site, domain names (I recently registered ORBS.ORG and was in the process of migrating to it), scripts and technical help to get it all installed and running. I will also be available for on-going help if desired (this might be good - getting rid of day-to-day maintenance would give me a chance to focus on improvements to the testing mechanism and stuff I've been meaning to do). Please contact me privately if interested. You will need at least a pentium-class system running UNIX of some sort (everything is written in Perl except one C script that has been tested on both Linux and NetBSD), Apache, BIND 8.1.x, a database with a DBI module, 20-30MB of free RAM, and probably 25% of a T1 connection to adequately host the site and serve zone transfers. If no one steps forward, however, ORBS will be gone forever. It's been fun, folks. Thanks once again to everyone who has written over the last 6 months with words of advice and support. You've made the abusive and clueless messages from blocked relay sites more bearable. Thanks also to everyone who has supported ORBS, through providing slave name servers, including support for ORBS in their products, etc. I understand that the latest Sendmail distribution even has ORBS support. I very sincerely apologize to all of you who will thus be impacted by the dissolution of ORBS. At least we got a few relays closed down and raised awareness of the problem to a new level. Please, if you know any sites that are using ORBS who may not receive this notice through the standard channels, can you let them know of of this announcement ASAP. I would like to minimize the problems associated with this change as much as possible. I already feel about as bad as I can stand - finding out this change caused undue mail disruptions to anyone (other than the obvious increase in incoming spam) would be very bad news indeed. A few statistics from the 6 months of ORBS operation: Open relays currently listed by ORBS: 48636 (this appears to have levelled off about a month ago, it's been fluctating between 47,000 and 50,000 ever since) Relays reported as closed and tested as closed after being added to ORBS: ~15,000 (no idea how many fixed their relays because of ORBS, but it's still pretty impressive) Largest providers still operating known open relays: Netcom, MSN, GTE Average claim of amount of spam blocked by ORBS on sites using it: 55-60% -- Alan ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Gregory S. Sutter My reality check just bounced. mailto:gsutter@pobox.com http://www.pobox.com/~gsutter/ PGP DSS public key 0x40AE3052 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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