Thursday, August 21, 2003

RMX Status

Been searching around the web for status on the RMX draft to see where it stands. Right now, it still seems to be in draft form. The ASRG mailing list is full of threads full of FUD from back in May 2003. So far it looks like it's still in the "baking" phase, along with 2 other counter-proposals.

Resources (Google Search):

Good explanation of mail routing and how RMX will work
- Well written, shows how simple the idea is and covers most of the minor issues involved.

Microsoft on board?
- MS has published an "executive e-mail" back on June 24 2003 and hints at a reverse-MX record type system under the section titled, "Bringing Spammers into the Sunshine", but (as usual) they don't indicate support of any existing drafts.

[SLL] bounce creator
- This is an e-mail on the SSC's linux-list mailing list and references the above article as well as the IETF draft and the www.mikerubel.org explanation page.

SMTP+SPF
- Seems to be a competing draft to the RMX and DMP drafts that attempts to use the existing TXT records (which are also used for things like Microsoft's Active Directory) by prefixing the domain with "_smtp_client." to indicate status.

[RANT] RE: [Asrg] seeking comments on new RMX article
- Just one of the many ASRG list threads to give you an idea of how resistant people are to making a change like this, solely because it won't solve the entire problem in one fell swoop, therefore it's not worth making any effort. Gets even more vitrolic down around message id 04411. And finally someone leaves the list and posts a well written goodbye note. I agree with the poster after spending a few hours reading the ASRG mailing list from back in May/June - the spam issue will be solved in spite of ASRG unless those attitudes drastically changed in the past 2 months. Another poster complaining about the ASRG in late June.

Fight Spam With the DNS, Not the CIA
- Early July 2003 article posted at CircleID (a weblog that deals with the internet core infrastructure). I'm putting this site down on my list of things to read later on.

Re: [anti-spam-wg@localhost] it could be sooo easy - Solution to Spam
- Discusses the problem that using something like RMX can result in big packets that are larger then 512 bytes. I don't know if DNS records are always less then 512 bytes or not, or how the protocol handles multiple packet responses.

Tame Junk E-Mail
- Recent article (posted yesterday). Mostly about what you can do to keep yourself off of junk e-mail lists, but also lists articles from other sources (most from the June/July timeframe though).

(ugh, my eyeballs are tired after 2 hours of poring over mailing lists, web sites, etc... while listening to a Radio One Essential Mix by Sander Kleinenberg.)

Re: [Asrg] 0.General - News Article - NYT Reports Porn Spam Hijacking Network
- Okay, one more... DRIP is yet another attempt to fix the spoof issue / the ability for arbitrary IP addresses to claim that they are authorized to send e-mail for a particular domain. Downside that I see right off the bat from this message is that DRIP depends on the domain name in the HELO/EHLO command, which, from other readings, doesn't always exist, and doesn't work for situations where a single mail server delivers multiple domains in a single session. (The mail software would have to disconnect/reconnect everytime they needed to send e-mail for a different domain.) But then, to implement DRIP and most of the others, you're assuming that SMTP has to be rewritten to some extent anyway...

Labels: Spam

posted by Wuphon's at 6:24 PM