SarahWest

Stimpy,

I feel like I've just been savaged by a dead sheep (did you write the RFC for that by any chance?). The standard traceroute included with Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS and almost every other operating system does a host lookup by default.

You stated you used traceroute to establish that the email came from NTL but how are you going to determine that from the IP address returned by the ICMP echo without resorting to doing a DNS or WHOIS lookup of the IP address? Do you gaze into a crystal ball and magically determine the exact location of an IP address? Do you hold a crystal on a piece of string over a map of the world until it (or you) gets very excited? Do you disembowel a chicken and read the entrails or do you levitate cross-legged reciting some obscure incantation until it becomes obvious to you where the IP address is from?

You have to be careful about dismissing human generated data because all IP address allocations are done by humans - even dynamic IP addresses because a human determines which IP addresses within a netblock are available to which clients.

There is not one shred of evidence anywhere to support your claim that the spam you sent came from the UK. There is plenty of evidence which supports the assertion that you are unable to decode email headers correctly.

You have made numerous grand pontifications almost all of which have been shown to be incorrect. I find the assertion that my servers have sent spam to Verizon in the past not only to be offensive but actually libellous.

Want to prove how insecure DNS is? Then feel free to hack my DNS servers and spoof the zones for the domain what-ho.co.uk. You may be able to set up another DNS server for the domain but you're not going to be able to convince anyone to use it. In my honest opinion I'd say it's more likely that the Pope will appear in a high-wire act wearing a fluorescent pink tutu at the next Superbowl advertising condoms than you will be capable of hacking my DNS.