On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 03:22:35PM +0100, Ralph Angenendt wrote:

Matt Shields wrote:

...

Just this morning I've gotten 3 or 4 pieces of spam on the CentOS mailing list.

Tell us how we should reject that in advance and we will. Yes, the "user" was subscribed.

Clearly you should assign an infinite number of monkeys to the problem!

Is kinda weird though; I've also seen posts from what I assume to be the same spam source (and around the exact same time) on the dell linux-poweredge list.

They'll unsubscribe the offenders and the problem will go away. This thing pops up from time to time.

Ray

Johnny Hughes wrote:

Ray Van Dolson wrote:

...

On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 03:22:35PM +0100, Ralph Angenendt wrote:

...

Matt Shields wrote:

...

Just this morning I've gotten 3 or 4 pieces of spam on the CentOS mailing list.

Tell us how we should reject that in advance and we will. Yes, the "user" was subscribed.

Clearly you should assign an infinite number of monkeys to the problem!

Is kinda weird though; I've also seen posts from what I assume to be the same spam source (and around the exact same time) on the dell linux-poweredge list.

They'll unsubscribe the offenders and the problem will go away. This thing pops up from time to time.

This is happening in other places too, with this specific user/mail.

We are putting things in place to block / mod these users, but we already have a positive email required and e-mail activation based on a link to the address.

We also have rbl list blocking on the server ... and spam scoring.

There is not much else we can do except block the offenders when they happen.

OR moderate all posts ... who wants to volunteer to read and release all posts :-D

Thanks, Johnny Hughes

Maybee this is why its more common to see weird pictures with text in them so its harder to script is ?

/Mats

Ray Van Dolson wrote:

...

Maybee this is why its more common to see weird pictures with text in them so its harder to script is ?

/Mats

That wouldn't help much in this case. Unless the subscription was being automated I guess.

Your ríght about that, but it's the automated scripts that is harder to stop when they can create several hundreds/thousands of accounts, have seen that on some different forums.

But I must say that this mailing list is quite free of illicit mails, that include SPAM :-)

So Admins GOD WORK!

/Mats

Please, no more GOD stuff.....

-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of MatsK Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 12:18 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] What's up with the mailing list spam?

Ray Van Dolson wrote:

...

...

Maybee this is why its more common to see weird pictures

with text in

...

...

them so its harder to script is ?

/Mats

That wouldn't help much in this case. Unless the subscription was being automated I guess.

Your ríght about that, but it's the automated scripts that is harder to stop when they can create several hundreds/thousands of accounts, have seen that on some different forums.

But I must say that this mailing list is quite free of illicit mails, that include SPAM :-)

So Admins GOD WORK!

/Mats

---

CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

OR moderate all posts ... who wants to volunteer to read and release all posts :-D

Thanks, Johnny Hughes

I thought I saw Perrin and Wieers raise their keyboards!!!

Errrr ahem, I meant hands...

:-)

( like they both do not have enough to do already ;-> )

- rh

Johnny Hughes wrote:

<snip>

OR moderate all posts ... who wants to volunteer to read and release all posts :-D

Thanks, Johnny Hughes

Besides that obvious question, moderation would mean an end to the quick replies that we enjoy now.

Regards, Robert

John Hinton wrote:

I guess the big advantage to them on list is the archive now contains their post and if there was a URL, a link from the CentOS archive, pretty well positioned by Google and the likes, now points to their site possibly moving them up on the search engines. It's actually a pretty good tactic.

The problem is that there was no advertisement inside the messages. It could be for enumerating hosts in a bot net later on.

Is nothing safe?

Safe from spammers? No. There's good and easy money to be made (think about it, most work goes on at the recipient side).

Ralph

While this isn't perfect, fewer than 1 spam per month has made it through to any of the lists we host in the last year (at least one of which I approved accidentally :-).

I think it should be noted that this is probably the first time I've seen a spam on the centos list that I can remember. And I've been subscribed here off and on for a couple years...

The system you're using does sound like a solid one though.

On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, Bill Campbell wrote:

On Fri, Jan 04, 2008, Ralph Angenendt wrote:

...

Matt Shields wrote:

...

Just this morning I've gotten 3 or 4 pieces of spam on the CentOS mailing list.

Tell us how we should reject that in advance and we will. Yes, the "user" was subscribed.

We have Mailman configured to check with spamassassin, sending messages with sufficiently high scores to the moderator(s) for approval and automatically discarding anything with a score > 20. Thus anything with scores between our required_score of 5 and 20 is held for moderation.

We checked the score on one of the messages and it was less than 1 (although of course that depends on spamassassin config ...)

While this isn't perfect, fewer than 1 spam per month has made it through to any of the lists we host in the last year (at least one of which I approved accidentally :-).

We are happy if you have specialist knowledge in this area for you to help us configure our mailman to act likewise.

Perhaps we could take this off list.

Regards Lance