Spam filter: DNS blacklist Nixspam ceases operation
For more than 20 years, Nixspam waded through the flood of unwanted emails and maintained an IP blacklist. Now the iX project is ending its services.
(Image: Bild erstellt mit KI in Bing Designer durch heise online / dmk)
The iX magazine spam filter project Nixspam has ceased operations. Since January 16, the DNS blacklist (DNSBL) under the domain name ix.dnsbl.manitu.net no longer contains any entries. Administrators should adjust the configuration of their email servers – However, there is no need to rush, as the operator of the Nixspam infrastructure, the web host manitu, is following the recommendations for switching off a DNSBL in RFC 6471 (section 3.4). Operation will be maintained for at least another six months, but the list will no longer return any hits. Filtering e-mail appliances should also be able to cope with this if their manufacturers do not adapt the internal filter lists.
Fighting the flood of spam
Nixspam was a project started in 2003 by the then iX editor Bert Ungerer and maintained for 20 years to ward off unwanted emails, which often contained malware (or a link to it) and whose volume and danger increased considerably around the year 2000. The first filter scripts under the name "NiX Spam" initially extended the then new content filter SpamAssassin. Nixspam finally went into operation in 2005 as a DNS blacklist, identifying senders of spam emails and maintaining a DNS-based blacklist of IP addresses that email systems could access for defense purposes. The infrastructure and administration have since been taken over by the web host manitu.
Videos by heise
The non-profit project was a joint effort by manitu, iX and other people who took on the race against spammers with expertise and commitment for more than two decades. Heise Medien appeared in the legal notice of the Nixspam website as the operator and acted as a contact and legal safeguard. The company withdrew as operator in 2024. The web host manitu looked into continuing to operate the website on its own responsibility, but it turned out to be uneconomical to protect against the expected legal risks due to the GDPR and NIS2, among other things, as manitu Managing Director Manuel Schmitt explains in his blog.
(tiw)
