ORBZ shuts down

The Open Relay Blocking Zone (ORBZ) has ceased operations after administrator Ian Gulliver received a court notice demanding he turn over all ORBZ account information.

The Open Relay Blocking Zone (ORBZ) has ceased operations after administrator Ian Gulliver received a court notice demanding he turn over all ORBZ account information.

The ORBZ service publishes a list of IPs for servers known to be Open Relays. As these Open Relays are widely used by spammers, many organisations – including some ISPs – used the ORBZ list to refuse mail from certain addresses.

According to El Reg, the demand for ORBZ account information comes due to "criminal charges for denial of service relating to the Lotus Domino issue". Specifically, ORBZ's method of operation does not play well with older versions of Lotus Domino server, causing them to enter into a mail-route loop that has the potential to consume 100% CPU.

While Ian was prepared to fight civil action in defence of his anti-spam efforts, 'the threat of jail time [was] too much.' Fortunately there are several other anti-spam Open Relay lists available similar to ORBZ that organisations may use, such as the Open Relay Database.