←back to thread

429 points pabs3 | 8 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
Show context
jeroenhd ◴[] No.43469827[source]
For me, as someone with their own mail server, these technologies mostly serve to inform me that Russian IP addresses are still trying to send email in the name of my domain for some stupid reason.

It makes sense that people whose business is sending email know how to set up email correctly. I'm mostly surprised at how many legitimate sysadmins struggle with getting the basics correct. Surely those dozens of DMARC emails you get that your sendgrid email has been refused because of a bad SPF signature should set in motion some kind of plan to ask if maybe marketing is using them legitimately?

Automated signatures are of limited value but I rarely see rejections based on SPF and DKIM that are a mistake. Things are probably worse for big organizations but as a small email server, technical rejections are usually the right call. The only exception is mailing lists, but the dozens of people who still use those can usually figure out how to add an exception for them.

replies(6): >>43470005 #>>43470195 #>>43470668 #>>43471472 #>>43473790 #>>43482338 #
JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.43470668[source]
> Russian IP addresses are still trying to send email in the name of my domain for some stupid reason

For what it's worth, I've started seeing cybersecurity insurers requiring riders and extra payments if you don't block Russian IPs.

replies(3): >>43471030 #>>43471308 #>>43477981 #
CableNinja ◴[] No.43471030[source]
Ive got a server hosting a number of things, amd monitoring setup for a lot of stats. Got tired of seeing blips because various countries were beating on my server, not a DoS, but enough requests to notice, and sometimes generate an alert. I blocked 7 countries, in full, and the impact was fantastic. No more 2gb of logs generated every day by countries that have no business accessing my server.

Unless you own a global business, i see no reason to even allow other countries access. The potential for attacks is too great, especially from some very specific countries.

replies(4): >>43471056 #>>43471322 #>>43471670 #>>43473772 #
1. smithkl42 ◴[] No.43471322{3}[source]
I'm the CTO of a US-based insurance company. Apart from some reinsurers in London and Bermuda, and a couple contractors in Canada, we don't do business outside the US. We've blocked all countries except those, and it has cut down massively on the folks attacking us.
replies(3): >>43471833 #>>43473634 #>>43476777 #
2. elcritch ◴[] No.43471833[source]
Lots of companies do this on their websites now using cloud flare or something similar. It’s practical. Still it’s frustrating as a user when you’re traveling over in Europe and can’t access your accounts to pay bills or whatnot.
replies(1): >>43472068 #
3. robocat ◴[] No.43472068[source]
Next time I travel overseas I'll have a VPN ready.

My bank had some technical problem that prevented access from overseas last time I traveled and I couldn't access my account (which was extremely inconvenient).

replies(2): >>43472262 #>>43473007 #
4. elcritch ◴[] No.43472262{3}[source]
Commercial VPNs are often blocked too. I found a p2p vpn to my home network + ssh socks5 proxy to work well.
5. gabeio ◴[] No.43473007{3}[source]
Most banks that will work with. For what ever reason the bank I now use knows most vpn providers and completely blocks all traffic from them so using a vpn is not an option either. The “vpn” I’ll have to use is tunneling back to my home ip. It’s actually quite frustrating.
6. ZeroTalent ◴[] No.43473634[source]
Kinda similar, but when I looked at the finances, I was surprised by how much money we're getting from places like the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, and the Emirates.
7. trod1234 ◴[] No.43476777[source]
Have you considered the additional cost of making it harder for your customers to do business with you, as well as the limited visibility that you set up for attacks that may become multi-stage in nature later?

You never see or collect the information by blocking everything at the outset.

In a world where you can proxy past these blocks fairly trivially, that's information you don't have for attribution later.

Defense in depth, or layered defenses are a best approach, but not if they blind you equally.

replies(1): >>43479119 #
8. UltraSane ◴[] No.43479119[source]
As someone who has whitelisted only US IP address space for my employer and blocked everything else I can attest that is DRASTICALLY reduces hostile traffic to us. I have an RDP honeypot that was blocking dozens of IPs every day before the whitelist and now it blocks 1 or 2 a day.