The Internet Society of China is blocking e-mails sent
from 127 servers identified as sources of spam.
Members of the ISC, which include Chinese government bodies,
companies and ISPs, will no longer accept e-mails that have been
routed through any of 127 mail servers identified last month by the
group's Anti-Spam E-Mail Co-ordination Team as sources of bulk
unsolicited e-mail.
The list is heavily tilted towards blocking spam sent from
servers in Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, and
includes eight servers in China, 90 servers in Taiwan and 27
servers in other countries, including 16 in the US and six in South
Korea.
The ISC has been concerned for some time with the mounting
problem posed by spam and actions taken by ISPs in other countries
to blacklist Chinese servers that are used to distribute
unsolicited e-mails.
"The Internet Society of China wants to try our best to restore
normal e-mail communications with the outside world for domestic
internet users," the group said in a statement posted on its
website.
To achieve this, the group has proposed a series of steps needed
"to prevent the spread of spam and to eliminate the negative
effects caused by the blocking of China’s e-mail service
providers".
The steps include calling on the government to develop stricter
laws and regulations to help stop the spread of spam, encouraging
Chinese ISPs to adopt anti-spam technology, educating users about
spam, getting ISPs to block e-mail access for spammers, and keeping
a list of e-mail providers and spammers sending unsolicited e-mail
with "evil intentions".
"If they make a push to take care of spam, it will have some
success," said Justin Mallen, chief executive officer of Silk Road
Technologies, an internet data centre in Hangzhou, Zhejiang
province.
There are several reasons why spam has become such a problem in
China. Chinese network administrators tend to be less aggressive in
managing their systems, Mallen said. In addition, security
precautions are often inadequate, allowing spammers to hijack a
company's mail server.
Another problem is the sheer size of the dominant
telecommunications operators.
"China Telecom is the primary carrier in China and internet data
centres are such a small part of their business, so they don't pay
much attention to spam," Mallen said.
"We warn [spammers] and tell them to stop," Mallen said. "It's
in our contracts that we don't support that."
The list of servers being blocked by ISC, which includes eight
run by Chinese companies, falls far short of a list of Chinese ISPs
that are used to distribute spam. The Spamhaus Project has
identified 633 servers at 82 Chinese ISPs - including several ISC
members - which serve as sources of spam.
The Spamhaus Project maintains a database of spam servers using
technology based on DNS (Domain Name System) that can be used to
help block bulk unsolicited e-mail.
The ISC's list is also significantly shorter than a list of spam
servers it tracked between November 2002 and June this year. During
that period, a spam collection system deployed by ISC received 3.5
million spam e-mails sent from 960 servers in China, 127 servers in
Hong Kong, 248 servers in Taiwan and 2,264 servers in other
countries, the group said.
After meeting between June and August to review the list, ISC
members reduced the number of spam servers to 23 in China, four in
Hong Kong, 97 in Taiwan and 101 in other countries. The group did
not disclose the method by which the number of servers had been
reduced.
The companies responsible for operating these servers were given
one month, from 8 August, to halt the spread of spam from their
servers. For companies that did not comply, ISC had threatened
further measures would be taken, resulting in the effort to block
access from spam servers.
Following the publication last month of the list of 127 servers
distributing spam, the ISC sustained two continuous attempts to
disrupt its own servers between 21 August and 27 August. The
specific nature of the attacks, which were linked by the group to
the publication of the list of servers used to send spam, was not
disclosed.
Sumner Lemon writes for IDG News
Service