Joker nukes Spamcop.net, the inside scoop

Update2: Everything should be back up to 90% now.

Update: It looks like Joker has fixed the problem, their whois shows the correct data now, and it should propagate to the roots tonight. There may still be problems for up to 48 hours as the invalid data in DNS caches expires.

While I'm angry at joker for causing the initial problem, I must give them some credit for fixing the problem relatively promptly on a weekend.

On Oct 15th, I received this email to my role account for spamcop.net (email addresses changed to protect from spam). It says "We got an announcement that the address-record of the owner of this domain is incomplete or wrong." The only thing wrong about the record was a disconnected phone number. Everything else was correct.

The same day, I replied with a link to my standard joe-job FAQ (offline until this problem is resolved) and corrected the bad phone number using their web-admin interface. I figured that would be the end of it. I said "Please let me know if any further action needs to be taken on my part."

I never received a response to that email.

It appears that a false complaint to joker can spur a processes whereby the owner of the domain must FAX a signed response or face termination of service. It should be noted that the original complaint was false and presumably malicious in nature - a human-engineering denial of service attack.

It's also interesting to note that a signed fax in no way verifies the contact information in question! Why not send a letter to the address with a secret code if what they want to do is verify it?

If anyone at joker reads this, pretty please, turn my domain back on. Millions of users depend on spamcop every day to keep their email happy.

The irony of spamcop being "terminated" by a false complaint does not escape me, however I will note that forgiveness is much more easilly won in the case of a spamcop complaint or blacklisting.

We are following every available avenue to get this problem resolved ASAP including calling joker in Germany ((011) 49-211-867670), sending an online support request, complying with their original requst for a signed FAX and moving the spamcop registration to another registrar.

If anyone can reach a live human at the above number (all I get is voicemail), please let them know we *have* sent their precious fax, and would they please go look for it and act on it.

I do appologize for not doing everything I could to ensure the original challenge from Joker was answered to their satisfaction. I felt I did as much as I should have done, but unfortunately what "should" happen isn't always what does, and I should have remembered that.

For the adventurous, here are some helpful IP addresses. Two notes on this information:

First, if you put them in your hosts file, remember they are set, and don't complain to us when things break the next time - IPs change, and that's why we use names. If you have problems in the future, remember to delete the IPs from your hosts file.

Second, if you have a way to use the spamcop dns server to get names and mx records, it will work a lot better than if you try to put an entry in your hosts file for every IP. That is, pick one or more of these akamai servers and put them in your resolve.conf or bind config.

Here is the list of 8 primary akamai nameservers:

ns1-117.akam.net
ns1-11.akam.net
ns1-109.akam.net
asia3.akam.net
ns1-93.akam.net
ns1-90.akam.net
use1.akam.net
ns1-73.akam.net