Tag Archives: Measurement

John Quarterman on Mapping Spam and Politics (audio)

At a meeting on a completely different subject, I was interviewed about SpamRankings.net. Here's the audio, and here's the blurb they supplied:

John S. Quarterman, long time Internet denizen, wrote one of the seminal books about networking prior to the commercialization of the Internet. He co-founded the first Internet consulting firm in Texas (TIC) in 1986, and co-founded one of the first ISPs in Austin (Zilker Internet Park, since sold to Jump Point). He was a founder of TISPA, the Texas ISP Association. Quarterman was born and raised in Lowndes County, where he married his wife Gretchen. They live on the same land where he grew up, and participate in local community and government.

Quarterman took some time during Georgia River Network's Weekend for Rivers to speak with the Nonprofit Snapshot about spam-mapping and small town politics.

More about Elinor Ostrom's Nobel-prize-winning work on organizing the commons, and how that applies to SpamRankings.net.

The water organization has since been incorporated as the Georgia non-profit WWALS Watershed Coalition:

WWALS is an advocacy organization working for watershed conservation of the Willacoochee, Withlacoochee, Alapaha, and Little River Systems watershed in south Georgia and north Florida through awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen advocacy.

-jsq

Microsoft, world leader in Internet security: and spamming?

Microsoft, world leader in Internet security, will doubtless clean up its spamming act when it sees its AS 8075 is #1 for outbound spam in the U.S. for April 2012 in rankings from PSBL data, pushing the U.S. to #1 worldwide. Other rankings don’t show Microsoft high, but does MSFT really want to show up in any of these rankings?

Rank (Previous)CountryPopulationSpam
Volume		Percent
of top 10
1 (3) US 310,232,863 673,30618.2%
2 (2) IN 1,173,108,018 506,39713.7%
3 (1) CN 1,330,044,000 413,08911.2%
    Total   3,689,376100%

These rankings that show Microsoft high are derived by SpamRankings.net from PSBL blocklist data. The April 2012 SpamRankings.net from CBL blocklist data do not show Microsoft in the top 10. Apparently PSBL’s spam traps happened to be in the line of spam from Microsoft, while CBL’s were not.

And of course Microsoft probably doesn’t mean to be sending any of that spam. More likely botnets exploited a MSFT security vulnerability. Here’s hoping they clean it up soon!

-jsq

eCrime Summit in Prague 25-27 April 2012

These ecrime meetings are always interesting and useful. -jsq

Press release of 29 March:

Containing the Global Cybercrime Threat is Focus of Counter eCrime Operations Summit (CeCOS VI) in Prague, April 25-27

CeCOS VI, in Prague, Czech Republic, to focus on harmonizing operational issues, cybercrime data exchange, and industrial policies to strengthen and unify the global counter-ecrime effort.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—The 6th annual Counter eCrime Operations Summit (CeCOS VI) will convene in Prague, Czech Republic, April 25-27, 2012, as the APWG gathers global leaders from the financial services, technology, government, law enforcement, communications sectors, and research centers to define common goals and harmonize resources to strengthen the global counter-cybercrime effort.

CeCOS VI Prague will review the development of response systems and resources available to counter-cybercrime managers and forensic professionals from around the world.

Specific goals of this high-level, multi-national conference are to identify common forensic needs, in terms of the data, tools, and communications protocols required to harmonize cybercrime response across borders and between private sector financial and industrial sector responders and public sector policy professionals and law enforcement.

Key presentations will include:

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What is IPWORLDNET and why is it spamming from Canada?

In the October SpamRankings.net for Canada (from CBL data), IPWORLDNET is that big blue molar tooth in the graph on the right. In the interactive chart you can see IPWORLDNET’s Autonomous System (AS) 19875 winning the month with two bursts of spam, and then dropping almost to zero.

That’s not the only spamming churn activity in Canada for October. The log chart shows MetroBridge Networks Corporation AS 25976 METROBRIDGE-NET jumping up from zero to take ninth place. It looks like one organization may have cleaned up its act while another got infested.

Last month’s winner, Canaca-com’s AS 33139 CANACA-210, came in second. From there down it’s mostly the usual suspects in slightly different orders. Interestingly, longterm winner Bell Canada’s AS 577 BACOM only came in fourth. This is unusual for a national telco. Maybe they’re watching the rankings?

-jsq

Daniel Karrenberg and RIPE Atlas

Daniel Karrenberg shows an animation related to RIPE Atlas, RIPE’s new active measurement project using USB-powered dongles scattered around the Internet.

Video by jsq at RIPE 61 in Rome, Italy, 15 Nov 2010. His slides, the RIPE Atlas home page, and the conference will put up video of all the talks within about a day.

-jsq

PS: My talk is 11AM Rome time tomorrow, Tuesday 16 Nov.