[tor-relays] Jerk spammers on tor-relays

Ralph Seichter m16+tor at monksofcool.net
Fri Sep 21 19:00:56 UTC 2018


On 21.09.18 19:50, Andreas Krey wrote:

> Create a dummy mail address. Make the list server send out mails from
> that address very slowly at random times to the recipients.

Ah, now you're changing the whole situation. We were talking about using
existing ("real") subscribers, and relying on them passing information
to the list admins. You wrote yourself: "Unfortunately that requires
that every spam addressee to respond quickly".

If you're changing the game, then let me put on my (purely fictional)
spammer hat to see where that gets us. :-) Let's imagine I'll subscribe
not only a single trigger account A, but a set A1-An. I only react to
list posts once a random subset of m <= n accounts (with m varying over
time) has received any particular message. Messages can be uniquely
identified after all. Also, I can add random delays before spamming,
and/or spam after collecting a randomly varying number of addresses
before sending out a batch of spam.

That's just what immediately comes to my mind, I'm sure there are more
effective methods of erasing one's tracks. The long and short of it is,
in my opinion, that all spam recipients need to implement their own spam
detection/prevention, and that the mailing list admins would have a very
hard time trying to identify spammers when the originating address is
not a list subscriber.

-Ralph


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