The solution is meant to stop bad traffic before any damage is caused

Jun 13, 2012 12:12 GMT  ·  By

Spamhaus, the company that dedicates its existence to combating spam and other malicious elements, has made available new products designed to help Internet Service Providers (ISPs), network service providers (NSPs), and web hosting providers make sure that “bad traffic” is stopped from entering their infrastructures.

The new service is called the Spamhaus BGP feed (BGPf) and it includes a number of three lists: the Spamhaus Don't Route Or Peer List (DROP), the Spamhaus extended DROP List (EDROP), and the Spamhaus Botnet C&C List (BGPCC).

While the first one has been available for quite some time, the last two are completely new.

The Spamhaus Botnet C&C list is a tool designed to help ISPs and network providers to import router configurations and block malware command and control (C&C) nodes from contacting the bots that may reside in their systems.

The list basically contains IP addresses identified as hosting cybercriminal-owned servers utilized to control zombies.

The second list, the EDROP is a listing policy that’s similar to the old DROP, but it contains only dangerous networks that are sub-allocations from another network.

It’s clear that today the Internet is a highly dangerous place, filled with spam, scams, and malware that’s designed to, one way or the other, earn a profit for some malicious masterminds. That’s why technologies such as the ones provided by Spamhaus are highly welcome.

However, there’s always the problem of implementation. Highly effective security solutions have been available for a long time now, but there’s always the matter of financing and other issues that prevent a company from securing its networks before it’s too late.

As Akamai’s Chief Security Officer Andy Ellis has highlighted at this year’s Hack in the Box security conference in Amsterdam, there’s that “security poverty line” that causes firms only to pretend that they’re protecting their assets and their customers, instead of actually doing so.