Re: [CORE] SPF Record ...

> > (perhaps the majority) of spam is sent through trojans running on
> > poorly secured Windows boxes.
>
> Right. I didn't really want to get into this level of detail
> on list, but here we go.
>
> Note that they're not just "poorly secured". They're
> _default_ Windows boxes. That is, it is now nearly
> impossible to download all the patches for a bog-standard
> WinXP installation before the machine is compromised. Which
> means that merely by reinstalling the operating system, many
> users are all but guaranteeing that they'll be part of a
> botnet in no time. And since the solution to a lot of
> Windows problems is "reinstall", you can see what happens.

A standalone firewall-box-thingy for your broadband is only like $15 or
so today. Let's lobby the lawmakers to make it mandatory to ship one of
those if you ship a box with windows on it to a customer :-) Or at least
ship the recovery CDs with SP2 preinstalled (which has a firewall that's
definitlyi enough to deal with *that* threat pre-installed).

But. That's not really what this thread is about. I thought it was
reasonably well established that even *IF* SPF worked the way it's
supposed to (I'm not getting into that discussion, this is clearly the
wrong forum for that), it's not appropriate for the postgresql.org
domain specifically because we have several users relaying through a
whole set of different MXes.

> The attackers, including spam operators, build networks of
> _thousands_ of these things. You can have such a pre-built
> net for your own use for next to no money, or build your own
> for very little effort with downloadable tools floating
> around the Net. Every one of those machines will be
> authenticated to its mail domain; and, if the machine is
> sending spam, then that spam is authenticated as well as any
> other mail from the domain is.

Hey, maybe we can set up a version of PostgreSQL that can run
distributed across one of these zombie nets? Talk about processing power
for your queries. Maybe I should speak to the bizgres guys about that.

//Magnus