Does Posterous filter SEO spam? Otherwise this loophole seems like a perfect opportunity for SEO spam to start filtering in on lapsed accounts that still have some PageRank...
How I "hacked" Dustin Curtis's Posterous.
71–80 of 123 posts
Re: How I "hacked" Dustin Curtis's Posterous.
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
or do what flickr does and give you a unique email address to send to that only you will know. you can add it to your address book so you won't have to remember it, and it's probably stronger than what most users would choose for a password.
Such considerations might be overkill for flickr/posterous but that does leave your "secret" email address in the logs of every smtp relay along the way. Its sort of equivalent to putting a password in a URL.
if you're relaying mail through smtp servers you don't trust, i think you have bigger problems to worry about than someone posting a funny message to your weblog.
Re: How I "hacked" Dustin Curtis's Posterous.
#73I agree with the conclusion. Posterous could fix this problem by implementing something like The Zucchini Method ( http://www.jgc.org/antispam/03152005-2150120647b00f4af9d3443... [PDF]). Basically, they could accept posts via email as long as the user included some hard to guess word (or other token) in the subject line.
Perhaps a compromise would be to give the user the option to send emails to a hard-to-guess email address and then, if the user comes across the situation where he needs to delete a spoofed post, make a note near the deletion link that the option is available This way, grandpa talking about his dog doesn't need to bother learning about security he doesn't really care about and the power user can post securely if it s…
I think the key here is that grandpa talking about his dog will find in short order that his Posterous blog is full of Viagra ads. Just because the SEO spammers haven't started using Posterous yet doesn't mean they won't pile on in droves once they realize it's possible.
Re: How I "hacked" Dustin Curtis's Posterous.
#74Does Postereous not support SPF? SPF tells you that the email really came from my server. That the email really came from my server tells you that it's really me, as sending through my server requires a password. Sadly SPF is grossly underused.
Since part of the allure was the need for "no passwords" in order to be simple, I doubt explaining SPF to novices is going to be a step forward.
Re: How I "hacked" Dustin Curtis's Posterous.
#75I was thinking about implementing a posterous-like email system for calendaring, and was wondering how they authenticated the emails. I recall them getting "hacked" around launch and there being some TC article about how they responded swiftly by adding new security measures.
Just registering the "usual" smtp sender / relay and prompting the user before posting something from a different spot could help. I don't know enough about MX records yet, but matching up the domain and sending IP could be another good measure. How else can this be improved?
Re: How I "hacked" Dustin Curtis's Posterous.
#76I agree with the conclusion. Posterous could fix this problem by implementing something like The Zucchini Method ( http://www.jgc.org/antispam/03152005-2150120647b00f4af9d3443... [PDF]). Basically, they could accept posts via email as long as the user included some hard to guess word (or other token) in the subject line.
They should just use SPF. This is what SPF is designed for, and it allows them to keep the user experience simple and straightforward. No weird passphrase to enter into the email, no weird random email address to email to, etc.
Yeah, no passphrase, just a hard to explain set of weird looking DNS entries to confuse the heck out of non-technical people with. The point of having no passworwd is to make it simpler. You might as well go back to using a password instead of using SPF.
Re: How I "hacked" Dustin Curtis's Posterous.
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Security shouldn't be optional. And this wouldn't fix the issue at all... I bet that 80%+ of users would leave the default post@ submission address.
Security shouldn't be optional. That seems like a very dogmatic attitude. Security almost always comes at some cost (e.g., inconvenience), and sometimes that cost is not worth the benefit.
Yes, I agree with you. It pretty much always comes at some cost and "user-friendliness" hurts most of the times. But it is exactly that "easy-to-use" design that leads to security holes like the one presented here.
And I stand by what I wrote earlier, if you want to add some security options then they should be enabled by default. Having even the best security system in-place is useless when it's disabled. Isn't it?
Re: How I "hacked" Dustin Curtis's Posterous.
#78All of you proposing obscure emails and other solutions, one of the reasons posterous' founders claim for their success is that they explicitly did NOT do any of those things. In fact, they're pretty clear that if they had done any of those things, posterous would have failed.
Re: How I "hacked" Dustin Curtis's Posterous.
#79I agree with the conclusion. Posterous could fix this problem by implementing something like The Zucchini Method ( http://www.jgc.org/antispam/03152005-2150120647b00f4af9d3443... [PDF]). Basically, they could accept posts via email as long as the user included some hard to guess word (or other token) in the subject line.
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Re: How I "hacked" Dustin Curtis's Posterous.
#80I agree with the conclusion. Posterous could fix this problem by implementing something like The Zucchini Method ( http://www.jgc.org/antispam/03152005-2150120647b00f4af9d3443... [PDF]). Basically, they could accept posts via email as long as the user included some hard to guess word (or other token) in the subject line.
They should just use SPF. This is what SPF is designed for, and it allows them to keep the user experience simple and straightforward. No weird passphrase to enter into the email, no weird random email address to email to, etc.
We do use SPF. It was related to the bug that caused this. It's been fixed now.