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Email Spam tracking 101
by Bill Mattocks Here is a spam I just received. It is bad, because it is
It is bad because it has mangled headers to attempt to
First line:
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This is my mail server getting the spam from a mail server known as bullets.cybercon.com Please note that the ISP listed here may well have been innocently hijacked by the spammer, we really don't know yet.
This is all fake...inserted by the spammer's bulk mail software. It can be safely ignored.
This line purports to show where bullets.cybercon.com actually
got the mail from that it relayed to me. Please note that
199.217.156.7 does not belong to Here is what we see:
What does this all
mean?
It means that the first part of the line is bogus, but the
second part is correct. We know that because most mail server
software will report accurate information about where it got the
mail from in most cases |
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It has been my
observation that you can trust the IP address found within the
square brackets, i.e. [199.217.156.7]
So, we have a reasonable
expectation that the spammer used a dialup account on Compuserve to
send this spam. >Received: from usr15-dialup53.mx1.Willowsprings.mci.net [166.55.38.181] Thus, the very top message was from my mailer, receiving the mail. The one right under that was from the ISP's mailer, sending it to me and reporting where it got it from. The rest is junk, designed to confuse us. Don't be fooled by Authenticated sender messages. They are easily faked, and mean nothing. They don't authenticate anything. |
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Now, if we follow Rush Limbaugh's advice and "follow the money," it would appear that the perpetrator of this spam has a mailbox at answerme.com and his handle is MrChicken What do we know about answerme.com?
Well, it happens that Cyberpromo is the owner of this particular domain. That kind of ends that trail for us, because Cyberpromo is a spamhaus, and their upstream provider, AGIS, is well aware of it and supports it. AGIS is a "backbone" on the Internet, so there is no one above them to complain to.
Still, since Cyberpromo CLAIMS to be against illegal relaying, we can send a copy of the complaint to relayabuse@cyberpromo.com and also to abuse@agis.net This won't do anything, but what the heck.  Cybercon Acceptable User Policy It is contrary to Cybercon policy for any user to effect or participate in any of the following activities through a Cybercon service: [snip] 3. To send unsolicited mass emailings to more than twenty-five (25) email users, if such unsolicited emailings provoke complaints from the recipients; 4. To engage in any of the foregoing activities using the service of another provider, but channeling such activities through a Cybercon account or remailer, or using a Cybercon account as a maildrop for responses; Now, it would appear from looking at their homepage (http://www.cybercon.com/) and also by "reading between the lines" of their AUP, that Cybercon is a spamhaus, however thinly disguised. That does not mean that they authorized this spam, or that they were not hijacked. But the suspicion is definitely there. In any case, they get a copy of the complaint as well. If they were hijacked, they may wish to investigate further and perhaps initiate legal action. If they were not, they may remain silent on the matter. In any case, they also have an upstream provider, which can be determined by doing a traceroute
on bullets.cybercon.com
So, we know they get their service from mci.net
What else do we know about the elusive Cybercon?
Let's check their IP range, to see who might own it.
We can use whois.internic.net So, it appears that Starnet owns their Class "C" license. Now, let's jump into
see 102--DejaNews (the land of "all my sins remembered") and see what we can find out: Upon reading the messages in question, it appears that they once complained that they had been mischaracterized as "cybercoM.com" and not "cybercon.com" and wanted a retraction printed. OK, no spam reports. How about their class C ticket holder? [nothing of consequence found]
So, it appears that MrChicken has posted an identical message a few days ago in UseNet. Just one, so not spam, although since it just happened, the others may not have been picked up by dejanews yet. www.dejanews.com Still, we see
that sprynet.net was used, not cybercon.com.
It begins to look as though cybercon.com
is not guilty, but either was hijacked or has a bad actor on their hands. So, we still complain to
Cybercon, but scratch abuse@mci.net
(their upstream provider) from the list. From: bmattocks@comp-sol.com
>Received: from bullets.cybercon.com (bullets.cybercon.com [199.217.156.7])
OK, folks, that's it for tonight.
Bill Mattocks, CIIU
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