Getting pounded .. sigh

[Jon Radel]

Alex Neuman van der Hans wrote:
> 
> I think it's called tarpitting. Basically it slows down communications,
> but at the attacker's tcp/ip stack.
> 
> Google around for smtp tarpitting or something. If you can't find
> anything I'll look around myself...
> 

Yup.  http://www.benzedrine.cx/relaydb.html is an interesting starting
point on the topic.  I have an OpenBSD firewall making use of some of
these techniques sitting in front of my mail servers.  (And, no, I've
never had time for a rigorous analysis as to how much good it does--for
a while the greylisting part was very helpful, but spammers are such
adaptable little critters....)

--Jon Radel