If you have Enabled Spam Assassin in your CPanel (under the mail setting) mail is checked for known spam and remote blacklists are checked to classify suspect email as SPAM.

However due to a recent problem with one of the major blacklist providers (SPEWS), who has apparently begun to bounce legitimate mail due to recent denial of service attacks, I have disabled the remote checking of blacklists for spam assassin.

This will probably result in you seeing more SPAM than usual for a while.... but it's better than bouncing legitimate mail. The SPEWS blacklist will be removed from the Spam Assassin software. I'll be upgrading things as soon as it's available through CPanel.

Here's the story from Slashdot.org.

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"As of today, Osirusoft, distributer of the SPEWS and open relay blocklists, among others, is no longer operational. Servers using these lists (including the FTC) are currently rejecting ALL email. This shutdown seems to be in response to a several-week-long DDoS attack on Osirusoft, SPEWS and others, resulting in both sites being down. This has caused much discussion on n.a.n-a.e, including the suggestion that the attack is somehow related to the SoBig worm. The spammers must be hurting if they can devote these kinds of resources to attacking blocklists." Read on below a related submission.

NSXDavid writes "Earlier today our site mysteriously ended up on Joe Jared's Osirusoft SPAM blacklist which is used by lots of antispam software (like SpamAssassin and sendmail). Since he is currently under a serious DDoS attack, there was no way to appeal this decision. We contacted Mr. Jared by phone who informed us that 'everyone needs to stop using Osirusoft and that he's going to be shutting the service down.' Then he says he's going to blacklist 'the world' (aka, ban *.*.*.*) to get his point across. Later on this evening, he apparently went ahead and did just that. Succumbing to lawsuits and DDoS, a once great blacklist is dead. SpamAssassin is removing it from their config in the next release (rc3) and email admins around the globe are reconfiguring their mail servers."

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