A responsible ISP - optus.net.au

[Steve_S]

Imagine my surprise and the happy ending

Over the last few days I have been recieving a large amount of SPAM and each message only contained text which said: "Please see the attached file for details." no attachments, and each and every one rotated through a series of forged From domain names.

No sales pitch or anything else. I normally don't get involved in any of the black hole list sites but this one seemed different so I traced the real IP to the owner of the block which is optus.net.au

Next I composed my polite and calm email to the arin contact data and a request to close the user down and or block Port 25. No screaming or yelling. Just do your thing within 6 hours and let me know.

Image my surprise a few hours later when I recieved a human generated response with a first and last name requesting my phone number and a promise to resolve the issue. Even though I had a strong inclination that this was a fixed business customers IP, most ISPs never respond or help.

Issue resolved. No more Spam. Seems the customer had a virus of some sort according to the ISP.

Cudos and thanks to optus.net.au

[Arie]

Not just "some" virus, but most likely the latest Sobig variant (F):

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/ven...obig.f@mm.html

New York-based MessageLabs found that about one in every 17 messages contained the Sobig virus--far more then the normal 1-in-275 ratio or 1-in-138 ratio that the previous top threat, Klez.H, had produced.

America Online also had to deal with an avalanche of e-mail. On any given day, the consumer Internet service provider--the world's largest--normally receives about 11 million e-mail messages that bear attachments that need to be checked. On Tuesday, the company took in about 31 million such messages, about 11.5 million of which carried the Sobig.F virus, according to an AOL representative.

http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-5066...tag=fd_nbs_ent

[Steve_S]

Arie,

Mucho thanks. What else would I exspect from the defacto "Windows God" and premiere Windows BB in the world

[Arie]

Thanks Steve. Although I still spend about 70% of my time on Windows, I'm also spending more & more time on Linux lately...

[Jan]

Originally posted by Arie
Not just "some" virus, but most likely the latest Sobig variant (F):

That would be it One of my mods@ email addresses has had two sessions now where we were bombarded with the things. The first one I estimate over 300 of them came through and then there was a break of about 12 hours before they started again. It has eased up again now. Hopefully that will be the last of them