Reporting problems today?

[emanmb]

I'm not even going to try submitting anymore until I see a post here that tells me SC is fixed as I would call SC "officially" broken although I'm not an official

[dra007]

Deffinitely not fixed just got this:

"Gateway Timeout

The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.3511fed5.1341567008.9faac5f6

"

It is pretty clear looking at the stats that since last Friday the reporting (except for two spikes) has trickled down substantially..

[NewView]

I'm still seeing very slow parsing once I submit the spam. Spamcop is then coming up on a "Here is your tracking URL" page instead of giving me a chance to actually report the spam. When I go back to the Home page and click Report Now ... Spamcop take FOREVER to do anything ... and then STILL reverts back to the "Here is your tracking URL" page .

SpamCop is still broke.

[stentifw]

Same here.

Gateway Timeout

The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.1d200e6b.1340978785.1105685a

Same here. None of my reports are being finished. It is a waste of time and I think I will abandon my altruistic contribution to Spamcop.

[hjp]

i think it is time to give the user a bit of information of what really is happening.

I cannot believe that Spamcop/Cisco can not find the problem or get the available manpower to fix the problem.

Why is there not a posting on spamcop.net alerting the user of all the error messages that users are seeing.

[dra007]

I agree, this situation is both bizzare and unbarable, especially for paying users of this service, it is very unusual to have a week of frustrating delays and yet no timeline when this issue will be addressed other than very vague promisses..

Now I cannot even log into the service..something is really broken!

[A.J.Mechelynck]

i think it is time to give the user a bit of information of what really is happening.

I cannot believe that Spamcop/Cisco can not find the problem or get the available manpower to fix the problem.

Why is there not a posting on spamcop.net alerting the user of all the error messages that users are seeing.

There is this forum thread.

There have been posts in this thread by Don D'Minion "SpamCop Admin", who is an official, and by Steve T "turetzr", by "farelf" and by me who are maybe not officials but certainly long-standing SpamCop users.

The problem has been brought to the knowledge of the people whose job it is to solve it, and they are working on it, but the solution is far from obvious or the problem would already be long solved.

It is an intermittent problem: at times we get various kinds of errors (I get "Gateway Timeout", other people also get other messages), at other times we can report spam, including spam which got queued when we had a gateway timeout etc., so there's no need to submit the same spam more than once.

The fact that the problem is intermittent makes it harder to solve.

The problem seems to be due to some kind of attack against SpamCop, and giving too much info, or too technical info, to the public, might make the attack worse.

My stand in the case is to continue reporting spam, to take a "Gateway Timeout" as meaning that the spam has been queued but cannot be processed at the moment, and to come back every few hours to see if I can report (or, as the case may be, cancel) some queued spam by clicking "Report now" in the SC frontpage. (No "Report Now" link when I'm logged-in means no queued spam.)

As always, clicking the white-and-green thumbnail near top right of a forum page will show you graphics of how spam reporting is going, in four graphs, for the last 24 hours, 7 days, 1 month and 1 year respectively.

[dcrampton]

......The problem has been brought to the knowledge of the people whose job it is to solve it, and they are working on it, but the solution is far from obvious or the problem would already be long solved.

....

This :^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

As frustrating as it is with a problematic system, we really should not be complaining about not getting information or no one is paying attention, like what I have seen here in this thread. I am sure that everyone who needs to know , is reading these forums. I would rather those who are working on the issues stay working on the issue rather than using any of that time trying to post information here. We need to have a little patience, and just present facts here not complaints.

I have had some of the same experiences as others with reporting. Today seems sepecially bad, for me anyway. I am unable to get any of my spam reported as they are all coming back with the gateway timeout. Today, I have also experienced logon problems (logon to the reporting system, and to the forum area.)

[Ex_Brit]

Do what I did and click the 'Remove all unreported spam' link and then stop queuing any more until such time things return to normal. Not good for reporting spammers but excellent for the nerves.

This is obviously a severe Denial of Service attack. If it was simply hardware-related it would have been fixed ages ago.

[CyberSchnook]

For anything but going to the SpamCop home page (and sometimes even then), the response has been

Gateway Timeout

The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.ea2f5cc.1341582526.ea2b33ed

for about a week now. This also includes trying to report saved spam, where the trace link doesn't even come back.

For all practical purposes, SpamCop has been unusable for this period.

[fliptop]

For anything but going to the SpamCop home page (and sometimes even then), the response has been

I too have been receiving similar responses and experiencing slowness for a few days. Most times the response is something like this:

Gateway Timeout

The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.37fe2fd0.1341589697.36623e9e

Strangely enough, this outage has seemed to coincide with a marked increase in spam coming to me from many sources, mostly yahoo! and google (gmail). Interesting? Yes. Coincidence? Who knows.....

Regards, Paul

[hok]

You may get an error message from time to time. Nevertheless, if you try later, it will be just fine. My spam age were up to 21 hours old. Now, it is down to about 7 hours old. I certainly improve a lot. Yet, it is normal as I usually can report spam within 3 hours.

[A.J.Mechelynck]

[...]

My stand in the case is to continue reporting spam, to take a "Gateway Timeout" as meaning that the spam has been queued but cannot be processed at the moment, and to come back every few hours to see if I can report (or, as the case may be, cancel) some queued spam by clicking "Report now" in the SC frontpage. (No "Report Now" link when I'm logged-in means no queued spam.)

[...]

Maybe I shouldn't have said this: now I got a message from service[at] saying

In the 24 hours starting Fri Jul 6 02:31:47 2012, you have submitted over   spams for processing, which exceeds our daily submission limit. No more submissions will be accepted. Your reporting account is disabled. Please reply if you are reporting spam in good faith and feel your account should be reinstated.

Note that the 24 hours in question aren't yet over, and that the "number of spams" is blank. I have replied, explaining how I thought I was reporting "in good faith". Let's see what happens.

[jik]

It is incomprehensible to me that a subsidiary of CISCO SYSTEMS INC., for heaven's sake, would take more than a week to remediate a DOS attack. Do you mean to tell me that one of the largest vendors of networking hardware in the world, if not the largest, does not have hardware and expertise at its disposal to stop such an attack? To say that strains credulity would be a massive understatement.

If it's a DOS, then Cisco HAS the resources to fix the problem but they don't care enough about SpamCop (which includes PAYING CUSTOMERS) to commit the resources to fix it.

I also don't buy the claim that they can't tell us anything about what's going on because it will somehow help the people perpetrating the attack. It should not come as a shock to hear that the people perpetrating the attack ALREADY KNOW THAT THEY ARE PERPETRATING AN ATTACK. They also obviously know that the SpamCop folks know they are being attacked. So the only people who don't know what is going on are we, the users, and it wouldn't hurt anything to tell us the truth, or at least more of it than we've been told so far.

I have always been a big fan of SpamCop, and I've been impressed by how reliable it has been, for the most part, in the past, but really, this is just too much.

[SpamCopAdmin]

For those of you getting suspension notices....

That's caused by SpamCop going berserk. Not your fault.

We'll get you back in operation soon.

Spammers are using our own service against us by signing up for accounts and then flooding them with mail in hopes of bringing down the system from overload.

The 50,000 spams per day limit is our defense against that.

- Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin -

service[at]admin.spamcop.net

.

[hjp]

It is incomprehensible to me that a subsidiary of CISCO SYSTEMS INC., for heaven's sake, would take more than a week to remediate a DOS attack.

Thank JIK My feeling completely.

From what I've heard in the past Spamcop does nor rely on user reports to any great degree if at all. Their emphasis is on their own info gathered from their own honeypots. Maybe their processing was not affected by what we are experiencing. I could be all wrong but I'll throw it out anyway.

I think the payment we make to spamcop is mostly for the email service. Again I might be wrong

Spammers are using our own service against us by signing up for accounts and then flooding them with mail in hopes of bringing down the system from overload.

- Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin -

service[at]admin.spamcop.net

.

Thanks Don for a bit of info

[emanmb]

Thanks for the update. Good luck!

For those of you getting suspension notices....

That's caused by SpamCop going berserk. Not your fault.

We'll get you back in operation soon.

Spammers are using our own service against us by signing up for accounts and then flooding them with mail in hopes of bringing down the system from overload.

The 50,000 spams per day limit is our defense against that.

- Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin -

service[at]admin.spamcop.net

.

[PandA]

For those of you getting suspension notices....

That's caused by SpamCop going berserk. Not your fault.

We'll get you back in operation soon.

Spammers are using our own service against us by signing up for accounts and then flooding them with mail in hopes of bringing down the system from overload.

The 50,000 spams per day limit is our defense against that.

- Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin -

service[at]admin.spamcop.net

.

looks like you need to set up some sort of anti-spam for user signup

[hjp]

All the spammers must be working today flooding Spamcop.

I've received very little spam today.

[danmoran]

Still timing out:

The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server.

Reference #1.ac971160.1341593853.90894edb

[MainID]

Here is an update (no year on the article, I think this is current):

Massive Distributed Denial of Service Attack Hits ClickBank and SpamCop.net

ClickBank and SpamCop.net Work With FBI to Identify Attackers

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ma...t-71400807.html

Edited Check-up: Article seems to be for the 2008 attack on SpamCop... Sorry...

[Snowbat]

The information was posted in NANAE some days ago. I was going to mention it here but I didn't know if further discussion would be appropriate.

looks like you need to set up some sort of anti-spam for user signup

Given the situation, I would assume the attacker(s) already have a large number of accounts. I'd also assume that they have been registering them for some time, perhaps even using them so that they are difficult to differentiate from legit accounts (maybe includes hijacked accounts of real users).

[turetzsr]

<snip>

As frustrating as it is with a problematic system, we really should not be complaining about not getting information or no one is paying attention, like what I have seen here in this thread. I am sure that everyone who needs to know , is reading these forums. I would rather those who are working on the issues stay working on the issue rather than using any of that time trying to post information here. We need to have a little patience, and just present facts here not complaints.

<snip>

...Nicely said, dcrapmton, thank you! I'd register only a small dissent to what you day: venting, however hopeless in terms of making an actual contribution to solving the problem, can be cathartic and therefore I accept the complaining.

[MainID]

Given the situation, I would assume the attacker(s) already have a large number of accounts. I'd also assume that they have been registering them for some time, perhaps even using them so that they are difficult to differentiate from legit accounts (maybe includes hijacked accounts of real users).

Well I am just a small user and have always liked and used SpamCop and appreciate the service they provide. I think postponing my sending of spam to report will help (somewhat) lesson the load so they can find the source faster.

Seem you are un-liked the most when you try to help...

[turetzsr]

<snip>

It is incomprehensible to me that a subsidiary of CISCO SYSTEMS INC., for heaven's sake, would take more than a week to remediate a DOS attack. Do you mean to tell me that one of the largest vendors of networking hardware in the world, if not the largest, does not have hardware and expertise at its disposal to stop such an attack? To say that strains credulity would be a massive understatement.

If it's a DOS, then Cisco HAS the resources to fix the problem but they don't care enough about SpamCop (which includes PAYING CUSTOMERS) to commit the resources to fix it.

...Good point! Clearly, SpamCop/ Cisco must clearly have as a mission the frustration off all their previously loyal fans, volunteers and customers, nothing more! <huh?>

I also don't buy the claim that they can't tell us anything about what's going on because it will somehow help the people perpetrating the attack.

<snip>

...No one with any real knowledge has said that, as far as I can remember - certainly not anyone authoritative. I (who have no special knowledge) did hazard the suggestion that one possible explanation for Don D'Minion's statement that it would not be appropriate for him to comment on the cause of the problem might be that it could encourage further attacks but I meant that not in terms of attacks from the current attackers but rather from potential attackers. We just don't know - er, didn't know until Don's more recent post.

<snip>

From what I've heard in the past Spamcop does nor rely on user reports to any great degree if at all. Their emphasis is on their own info gathered from their own honeypots. Maybe their processing was not affected by what we are experiencing. I could be all wrong but I'll throw it out anyway.

...Both are used, although you are correct that far more weight is placed on SpamCop spam traps (see "SpamCop FAQ, links to which appear near the top left of each SpamCop Forum page, article labeled "What is on the list?").

I think the payment we make to spamcop is mostly for the email service. Again I might be wrong

<snip>

...That is my understanding of the $30 per year subscription, as well.