ESP unwittingly used to send spam

Late last week I heard from someone at AOL they were seeing strange traffic from a major ESP, that looked like the ESP was an open relay. This morning I received an email from AOL detailing what happened as relayed by the ESP.

IronPort Open Relay Vulnerability
Systems Affected
IronPort A60 running software version 2.5.4-005. According to IronPort, later devices and software versions using the same filtering mechanisms are vulnerable.
Overview
In recent weeks, one or more rogue spammers have been using misconfigured IronPort A60s as open relays to send unsolicited emails for AOL users via open relay. It is important for IronPort device administrators to review their configuration to shore up any vulnerability to this web server exploit.
Diagnosis
A seemingly minor configuration mistake made years ago internally has been exploited over the last several weeks to send out massive amounts of unsolicited email to AOL users. The spam mail originated from an outside zombie server, apparently infected with remote mailing viruses (such as BackDoor.Servu.76) according to the IT contact at IP 66.139.77.16. <ESP> has a filter specifically designed to deliver email over IP ranges set for AOL only. However, it was listed before a filter designed to log and discard bounced emails coming in through the Internet-facing of the IronPort appliance.
Impact
We have received 6,500 customer complaints so far through the AOL feedback loop. As the IronPort devices are black boxes, we are unable to determine how many unsolicited emails were delivered across them. It is difficult to ascertain whether or not the rogue spammer(s) knew only AOL addresses were delivered using this exploit. It is important to note that only AOL addresses were delivered in our specific case due to the order of the filters.
Solution
The solution was simple: move the filter designed to log and drop bounce messages coming in from the Internet to the top of the filter list so it will run first, as other filters may direct the IronPort device to deliver the emails through this vulnerability.
Authors: Jake Lanza, Baigh Auvigne, Daniel Fox

Congrats to the ESP for noticing this so quickly and being on the ball to stop this leak so quickly.
The compromise was first noticed when email coming back through the AOL FBL did not match any mail sent by the ESP. Initially, the ESP contacted AOL to report a problem with the FBL, but in working with AOL employees determined the email was coming from the ESP’s IP addresses.
This highlights the need to not just process FBL emails, but also monitor them and react when there are emails in a FBL that you do not recognize.
Ironport has responded here.

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Predictions for 2008

I did not have a lot of predictions for what will happen with email at the beginning of the year so I did not do a traditional beginning of the year post. Over the last 3 – 4 weeks, though, I have noticed some things that I think show where the industry is going.
Authentication. In January two announcements happened that lead me to believe most legitimate mail will be DK/DKIM signed by the end of the year. AOTA announced that approximately 50% of all email was currently authenticated. They did not separate out SPF/SenderID authentication from DK/DKIM authentication, but this still suggests email authentication is being widely adopted. AOL announced they will be checking DKIM on their inbound mail. I expect more and more email will be DKIM signed in response to this announcement.
Filtering. The end of 2007 marked a steady uptick in mail being filtered or blocked by recipient domains. I expect this trend to continue throughout 2008. Recipient domains are rolling out new technology to measure complaints, evaluate reputation and monitor unwanted email in ways that tease out the bad actors from the good. This means more bad and borderline email will be blocked. Over the short term, I expect to see more good email blocked, too, but expect this will resolve itself by Q2/Q3.
Sender Improvements. As the ISPs get better at filtering, I expect that many borderline senders will discover they cannot continue to have sloppy subscription practices and still get their mail delivered. Improved authentication and better filtering let ISPs pin-point blocks. Instead of having to block by IP or by domain, they can block only some mail from a domain, or only some mail from an IP. There are a number of senders who are sending mail that users do not want mixed with mail that recipients do want. Right now, if there is more mail that recipients want in that mix, then ISPs let the mail through. This will not continue to happen through 2008. Senders will need to send mail users actively want in order to see good delivery.
Less is more. A lot of other email bloggers have talked about this, and I will echo their predictions. Less email is more. Send relevant mail that your customers want. Target, target, target. Good mailers will not send offers to their entire database, instead they will send mail to a select portion of their database.
Feedback loops. Use of feedback loops by recipient domains will continue to grow.
Mobile email. More recipients will be receiving email on mobile devices.
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SenderScore update

Matt has posted a bit more about the SenderScore Blacklist, following up on my post about the changes at Comcast. George Bilbrey, VP and General Manager, for Return Path followed up with him to explain a bit more about the blacklist. George says:

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Blogroll

I added a few blogs to my blogroll today.
Terry Zink works at Microsoft handling spam blocking issues for one of their platforms. His posts offer insight into how recipient administrators view spam filtering. He has a long, information dense series of posts on email authentication.
E-mail, tech policy, and more is written by John Levine, a general expert on almost everything internet, especially spam and abuse issues. He posts somewhat irregularly about interesting things he sees and hears about spam, abuse, internet law and other things.
Justin Mason’s blog contains information from the primary SpamAssassin developer. Like Terry’s blog, it gives readers some insight into the thought process of people creating filters.
Al Iverson’s blogs have been on my blogroll for a while now. His DNSBL resource contains information about various DNSBL and how they work against a single, well defined mail stream. His spam resource blog provides information about delivery and email marketing from someone who has been in the industry as long as I have.
Email Karma is Matt Verhout’s blog and contains a lot of useful delivery information.
No man is an iland provides practical information on marketing by email. Some of the information is delivery related, a lot more of it is solid marketing information. Mark often points to useful studies and information posted around the net.
MonkeyBrains has always entertaining and informative articles about delivery, email marketing and practical ways to make your email marketing more effective.

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