Fairly rude surprise in logs this AM -- possible DoS attempt?

Tue Jan 20 05:58:32 PST 2004

So -- I received an explanation for the portscanning I mentioned here:

>Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 09:40:00 +0100
>From: "Richard Zuidhof \(ZON\)" <richard at zonnet.nl>
>To: abuse at catwhisker.org
>Subject: Re: Port scanning from 62.58.50.220 (dsbl.zonnet.nl)??!?

>Your address was scanned to check if you have an open proxy. Because we 
>experience a incredible lot of spam from dsl and cable connections that 
>have open proxies we do a single test on each one that sends us mail. In 
>that way we find thousands of new open proxies every day.

>Because your address has a reverse name that contains 'dsl' 
>(adsl-63-193-123-122.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net) you were scanned. Sorry for 
>the inconvenience.

>....

So, no harm done.  It just caught me off-guard, to an extent.

[In my response to Richard, I pointed out that I could understand the
approach, to an extent; it just seemed to me that what was done was
"overkill."]

And I suppose that folks who don't actually try to use residential DSL
(or cable, I suppose) connections for direct SMTP connections to sites
unaffiliated with their ISP would be less likely to encounter such
things.

Peace,
david       (current hat: postmaster at catwhisker.org)
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
I do not "unsubscribe" from email "services" to which I have not explicitly
subscribed.  Rather, I block spammers' access to SMTP servers I control,
and encourage others who are in a position to do so to do likewise.