According to the Registry Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database, 200 spammers are responsible for 90% of the world’s spam.

The ROKSO database makes fascinating reading. However, while a lot of journalists routinely mine this database for stories, few non-journalists and non-spam-fighters seem to know about it.

Why am I thinking about SPAMHAUS? Because it turns out that MIT is on the SPAMHAUS SBL — the Spamhaus Block List — as a “verified spam source.”

Ironically, I found this out when I was trying to report spam from someone else…

The original message was
  received at Sat, 23 Oct 2004 13:25:19 -0400 (EDT) 
from CENTRAL-CITY-CARRIER-STATION.MIT.EDU [18.7.7.72]


 ---- The following addresses had permanent 

 fatal errors -----



 (reason: 553 5.3.0 rejected see 

 http://www.spamhaus.org/SBL or http://dsbl.org) 

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mx03.t-net.net.ve.:

 MAIL From:


 http://www.spamhaus.org/SBL or http://dsbl.org

 501 5.6.0 Data format error

 Reporting-MTA: dns; pacific-carrier-annex.mit.edu

 Received-From-MTA: DNS; 
 CENTRAL-CITY-CARRIER-STATION.MIT.EDU

 Arrival-Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 13:25:19 -0400 (EDT) 

Final-Recipient: RFC822; sci2005@telcel.net.ve

 Action: failed

 Status: 5.3.0

 Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 553 5.3.0 rejected see
  http://www.spamhaus.org/SBL or  http://dsbl.org

 Last-Attempt-Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 13:25:30 -0400 (EDT)


 From: "Simson L. Garfinkel" 
Date: October 23, 2004 1:22:42 PM EDT

 To: webmaster@ao.net

 Cc: sci2005@telcel.net.ve, sci2005@cantv.net 

 (Prof. Nagib Callaos), 

 sci2005@iiis.org, "Prof. Nagib Callaos" 

 Subject: spam from your user...