So I get up in the morning, ready to face the challenges of the day. I stretch, scratch a few places, and I’m off to the computer.

First, I read the postings for the OTR Digest that have come in overnight. I used to save this as a “treat,” but as you’ll see if I don’t do it now, I won’t enjoy it at all. After reading the messages, I open the server log report; every morning, my server sends me a report of what’s happened the day before, and especially with the routines I added, it usually isn’t pretty. First, I have to deal with the attempted break-ins…these are generally trying to crack the SSH server, but lately the mail server has been taking a pretty hard hit with machines trying to crack a known vulnerability (yes, I’m patched, why?). Even though I know this is the work of a zombie machine which is part of a botnet, I report these to the upstreams, and depending on the severity of the attack and location of the server, I might firewall off that machine or its netblock (sorry, folks, but large parts of Russia, China, and other countries can’t even see this server - it might not be right, but it’s the only thing keeping the server on-line).

Next time to deal with email spam. I manage maybe a hundred addresses on the server, and while my filters are mean-ugly, stuff still slips through. Depending on the spam, I report this to the upstream using SpamCop or shove it into the trash. SpamCop makes this part a little less unbearable, but it’s still time-consuming.

Well, the day is off to a flying start. Now time to deal with the forums; there are probably 10-20 registered accounts between the two forums overnight (I try to do this a few times every day so the few legitimate accounts don’t have to wait forever for access); most are easily identified as bogus (any email address that ends in something like “hotgirlzandmedications.com” is clearly suspect), but some need to have the registration IP checked (Hint: if someone is registering for The Bob Edwards Show Discussion Forum from a machine in the Ukraine, it probably ain’t legit), and some I “sit on” just in case.

Ok, what’s next? Ah, yes…blog comment spam. Here on Nostalgic Rumblings, I have less of a problem with it than most. Posters need to register for an account, which puts most spammers off; a few have reg’d and spammed, but most don’t bother - it’s a pain for legit “drive-by’s,” but that’s the way it is. No, the real problem is trackback spam - trackbacks were designed to be a really cool way for blogs to discuss topics in a distributed fashion, but nowadays they are practically useless because of the trackback spam, where computers spew pr0n and pharm scam URLs through them.

I continue to allow them even though a legit one is rare because…well, darnitall, why let the bast*rds win? I use a plug-in called Trackback Validator which prevents the trackbacks from entering the system (in the years I’ve been using it, it has only once allowed a spam trackback into the moderation queue, and that one looked perfectly legitimate until a close examination), but the server sends me copies of the attempts anyway. I firewall off the worst-offending zombies to keep them from stealing more bandwidth, and take the time to report to Universities, government, and an occasional non-profit that their machine has been taken over - I don’t report all of them since it would take me another three or four hours. Most of the recipients of these gratefully accept them and clean the machines; in all the time I’ve been doing this, only the Director of Academic Computing at the University of South Florida (yeah, I never heard of it, either) was so rude as to flip me off for reporting an infected machine - as you can imagine, I don’t care if their machines are still being used by the spammers to sell bogus Viagra.

Anyway, I know I’m playing whack-a-mole here, but if I can help some legit systems keep their machines clean, it’s worth it, I guess.

Ok, now to get to some real work. Wait…it’s been two hours or so to deal with all of that, my eyes hurt from all the peering at small command-line boxes, my hands are stiff from all the copy/paste/typing/mousing, and I’m exhausted from the strain of trying to get all this done as quickly as I can so there’s a little left for the rest of the day. I’m so sick and tired of pr0n and pharm scams I could retch, and so angry these morons want to expose kids to this crap so they can earn a few illegal bucks I can barely sit in the chair.

Any wonder I despise the spammer scum?

EDIT 03/27/2007 - Ok, finally found another moron who complains about being told his machines are being hijacked…