nanog mailing list archives

Re: Arrogant RBL list maintainers


From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:15:46 -0500

On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 12:12:22AM -0600, James Hess wrote:
Many sites don't use names that will necessarily be meaningful to an outsider.

Then they should expect issues with mail acceptance by outsiders.

Some sites might want to avoid  certain "meaningful"   RDNS entries
since  spammers, hackers, and other abusive users that scan IP ranges
can utilize the  RDNS to facilitate their activities.      

This is nonsense.  RDNS/DNS naming choices are a trivial obstacle to
spammers et.al. who went over this speed bump at 70 MPH years ago and
have been accelerating ever since.  This kind of security-by-obscurity
tactic is far more likely to draw their attention than evade it, as any
site using it has in effect run up a large flag with "we don't understand
security basics" written on it and thus made itself an attractive target.

---Rsk


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