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A Few Thoughts on the Future of Email Authentication

• Comment posted Apr 21, 2009 2:43 pm PDT — by David MacQuigg
  I am a supporter of dkim - it fulfils its authentication role with far less pitfalls than spf had We should support both DKIM and SPF, and any other methods a sender may chose to offer.  If the alleged deficiencies…

• Comment posted Apr 20, 2009 12:53 am PDT — by David MacQuigg
  you would see I am including reputation as part of the systems I consider successful.  I am not looking for a "silver bullet" that will "kill spam dead".  Spam will continue in one form or another as long as there…

• Comment posted Apr 16, 2009 11:35 pm PDT — by David MacQuigg
  The reason we don't have universal authentication of legitimate senders is not technical difficulties, but the fact that industry likes the status quo.  That includes the $2B per year anti-spam industry, the network providers whose mailflow is 90% spam, and…

Fixing the Internet Might Break It Worse Than It's Broken Now

• Comment posted Feb 25, 2009 1:19 pm PST — by David MacQuigg
  I don't think we have to make a choice between freedom and security to fix the Internet.  We can have both.  What if we had two email systems - first class, and everything else.  Would the one interfere with the…

More on 'Researchers Hijack Storm Worm to Track Profits'

• Comment posted Dec 23, 2008 7:33 pm PST — by David MacQuigg
  What I found most interesting about the Kanich article was the estimate of spammer profits after paying the crooks who run the botnets.  Using their figure of $80 cost per million spams, the cost of a 10B spam campaign would…

Oklahoma Man Wins $10 Million Judgment Against a Spammer

• Comment posted Oct 04, 2005 5:46 pm PDT — by David MacQuigg
  Right on, as usual.  Spammers are like dogs crapping on our lawns.  CAN SPAM takes away thousands of BB guns, and gives us one Howitzer. I agree with you on the concern about nuisance suits.  There will be stiff opposition…

Twenty Myths and Truths About IPv6 and the US IPv6 Transition

• Comment posted Jul 23, 2005 6:19 pm PDT — by David MacQuigg
  I'm not an expert, but I am very interested in anything that will help stop forgery and spam.  As I understand it, however, the authentication header in an IPv6 packet is intended for a very different kind of authentication.  This…

There Is No "Spam Problem"

• Comment posted Jun 24, 2005 1:29 pm PDT — by David MacQuigg
  Hi Simon, Thanks for the clarification. One more question.  Do I understand that what you are saying is AOL blocked only the initial SYN packet on port 25, but the zombies could just ignore the lack of an ACK response…

• Comment posted Jun 22, 2005 6:50 pm PDT — by David MacQuigg
  > When AOL attempted to suppress spam by blocking outgoing SYN > packets to port 25, they got some good press, but PCs in their > network were still responsible for a large amount of the email > spam arriving…

Phishing: An Interesting Twist on a Common Scam

• Comment posted Jun 08, 2005 6:07 pm PDT — by David MacQuigg
  The real question here is - are these network vulnerabilities a greater threat than someone posing as a telephone company employee and installing a wiretap?  Could the bank avoid the problem by using an ISP that is more concientious about…

How a Security Specialist Fell Victim to Attack

• Comment posted May 24, 2005 10:25 pm PDT — by David MacQuigg
  Well Jeff, I assume from your arrogance that you know everything about the security of web browsers.  Please explain in fundamental terms why a web browser needs to run unknown program code.

• Comment posted May 09, 2005 2:50 pm PDT — by David MacQuigg
  It would be helpful to know what software you are using.  You talk about "safe mode", so I assume it is Windows.  XP?  Version?  SP2?  Explorer?  Version?  Latest security patches? I assume you tried to trace the source of the…

Does CAN-SPAM Really Matter?

• Comment posted Mar 12, 2005 6:50 pm PST — by David MacQuigg
  I keep hoping that the industry will "get its act together", and avoid government regulation, but the last 15 months since CAN-SPAM seems to say otherwise. The great hope of 2004 was that email authetication would allow us to identify…

• Comment posted Mar 01, 2005 7:02 pm PST — by David MacQuigg
  In response to Chris Linfoot's comment that AOL has not reduced its outgoing spam, I made a quick chart showing the relative % of spam from each of three large domains. http://www.ece.arizona.edu/~edatools/etc/DomainRatings.htm Looks like AOL might be 100 times better…

• Comment posted Mar 01, 2005 6:50 pm PST — by David MacQuigg
  I agree the NY Times article was excessively pessimistic, and AOL has it right.  Spam can be stopped.  It just takes effort by the ISPs who tolerate outgoing spam.  That will happen when they can be held accountable.  Accountability will…