Spamhaus hits out at ISPs, praises Microsoft

The chief technology officer of anti-spam campaign group Spamhaus hit out at ISPs on Tuesday, accusing them of failing to protect their customers from malicious attacks. Meanwhile he had high praise for Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2.

In a panel session at IT conference Infosecurity Europe 2005, Richard Cox said ISPs were ignorant about who their customers were and what problems they faced. "The majority of (networks) do not know who their customers are," said Cox. "If you have a problem, you will not get a response. They will not firewall your network, but they do firewall the customer support center so you cannot get through."

Cox highlighted botnets--thousands of networked compromised PCs, typically used for malicious purposes such as spamming--as a problem for the Internet community. He said ISPs should exclude botnet computers from using their service. "It is the network's responsibility to take [botnet] computers off the network."

Cox said that Windows XP Service Pack 2 had helped to reduce the number of botnets around the world. "SP2 has removed a number of vulnerabilities in XP," said Cox. "But whatever we put right in SP2, [hackers] will find a way around it."

But the Computer Crime Unit of London's Metropolitan police disagreed with Cox.

"The botnet issue is a rising problem despite the issue of SP2," said Detective Inspector Chris Simpson. "It is also the script kiddies [doing this]. We might joke about the impact of these people, but a 15- or 16-year-old with a 30,000-strong botnet might be able to wipe someone off the Internet, so they really do pose a threat to anyone with Internet presence."

Dan Ilett of ZDNet UK reported from London.

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Spamhaus, Service Pack 2, Internet Service Provider, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2

Add a Comment (Log in or register) 11 comments (Page 1 of 1)
Spamhaus...
by System Tyrant April 26, 2005 9:31 PM PDT
needs to either be shut down or heavily regulated. The way they do business is ridiculas. They block IP numbers without regard to everyone on it. My host had theirs blocked a few weeks ago and it took five days to get if fixed. I could not send e-mail for five days. That is ridiculas. I know spam is a problem without many real solutions, but their solutions just sucks. I will not knowanly support any company that uses their products.

I would also suggest that people read the information on their site. They don't care about colateral damage done to those that use shared hosting. I personally hope they get taken down.
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One more comment.
by System Tyrant April 26, 2005 9:37 PM PDT
This guy Cox is an idiot. Self richeous useless man. I don't think he knows a d*mn thing about stopping spam. If you haven't figured it out yet I really don't like Spamhaus. This company is run by idiots and causes more problems than they fix. And where is there customer service? Oh yeah hidden behind a firewall. Just try to get anything out of them. Unless you are an ISP you won't get even a peep from them.

You can't sue them either. They cost your company a million dollars. Well too bad.

I say down with Spamhaus.
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Yeap
by orfeu_niko April 26, 2005 11:00 PM PDT
Now I understand why US still uses dial-up. If
someone has broadband or something, then he's a
security threat.
Or maybe I'm wrong. I'm willing to admit that.
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