[tor-relays] Jerk spammers on tor-relays (was Re: Fwd: Tor Guard Relay)

[Roger Dingledine]

On Sat, Jun 09, 2018 at 06:21:16PM -0700, Keifer Bly wrote:
> However, is there a way we can ban email addresses from the relay operators list? It seems like removing the email addresses that have been sending these from the list might be a good idea, if that is possible.

Yes, it is easy to unsubscribe people, and to prevent them from
subscribing.

But, which addresses shall we unsubscribe? The spammer addresses are
not subscribed (I checked). They're likely subscribed as something else,
and then sending spam in response to the mails they get.

Maybe there is a mailman module that lets you send a different watermarked
mail to each subscriber, or to send mails out with different timing
patterns to do a binary search over the list, in order to discover which
addresses are triggering the spam? But I don't know of an easy way to
do it.

Also, I hear from at least one person that some tor-dev subscribers are
getting spams too. :(

As for motivation, my general assumption is not that it's a targeted
attack because we are Tor (or even that they particularly know or care
what Tor is), but rather that the Internet has been turning into a giant
mass of spam, and this event is just another step in that direction.
Consider it a variant of the "never attribute to malice that which can
be adequately explained by..." sayings.

Sorry for the troubles,
--Roger