Word to the Wise » Asides

MAAWG travel alert

laura — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:01:54 +0000

For those of you coming to the Bay Area for MAAWG and considering flying into Oakland, be aware the Bay Bridge will be closed in the Oakand -> San Francisco direction for all of President’s day weekend. BART is unaffected, but if you’re planning on driving from Oakland into the city, you’ll have to do it by going south over the San Mateo bridge and then back north to the city.

DKIM deployment challenges

laura — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:22:16 +0000

Cloudmark has an interesting blog post pointing out some of the challenges of signing mail with DKIM in a large company with a diverse mail system.

What are you validating?

laura — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:26:40 +0000

Al throws in his own two cents on the question of real time address validation.

Is any data safe?

laura — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:00:38 +0000

Today another major retailer announced their customer files were compromised. This company had clearly implemented some security that kept hackers from getting too much information. Passwords were hashed and credit card numbers were kept on a separate server, which does signal that the company designed with security in mind. Nevertheless, personal information was compromised.

Is there anyway to keep information safe if it’s accessible from the internet? Some of my uber-security conscious friends would say no. I am beginning to believe them.

The Constitutionality of SOPA

laura — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:31:22 +0000

Lawrence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, says SOPA violates the first amendment.

SOPA / PIPA

laura — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:58:12 +0000

I’ve not mentioned anything about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and it’s companion bill the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) that are currently making their ways through Congress. Both bills put a lot of obligation on the ISPs to stop bad traffic on the Internet. Unfortunately, it seems no one writing the bill asked anyone with technical or operational experience for input. Many of the obligations are going to significantly impact ISP functioning and will probably degrade service for users.

The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group sent a letter to congress yesterday (PDF link), outlining the issues with SOPA and PIPA. I found it explained the bills and the flaws much better than many other summaries.

Yahoo awarded $610 million

laura — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 03:56:46 +0000

The Federal district court in New York awarded Yahoo $610 million dollars in a suit they filed in 2008.

We lie more in email than in person

laura — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 03:21:06 +0000

People are more prone to lie over email than face to face.

Vetting customers

laura — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:33:25 +0000

MAAWG has published a BCP for vetting new customers. This is the culmination of much work by a lot of people.

One of the best things about the document is the discussion of how spammers attempt to hide their identity. All too often I’ve been called in by ESPs to help them identify how a spammer got on their network and where their process failed. As filtering gets better at blocking spam, spammers are spending more and more time trying to steal good reputations to get their unwanted mail through.

Providers who follow these rules may still find themselves with spammers as customers, but the spammers will have to work harder to get on clean networks.

More on Rove Digital

laura — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:48:48 +0000

Brian Krebs has more on Rove Digital and the criminal connection to other scammers and spammers.