I just got an e-mail from someone currently attending the IGF meeting in Geneva . The e-mail ended up in my spam folder because the IP address used for the WLAN at the meeting is on a spambot/virusbot blacklist, namely cbl.abuseat.org. Apparently some guy there has his computer infected by a spambot or a virusbot. Because the local host uses a NAT, all the computers share the same public IP address. This means that all the attendees to the meeting risk seeing their e-mails blacklisted somewhere.
Funny this comes from the very people who would like to set up strategies to fight cybercrime …
Lesson to be learned:
One: NATs are a nuisance. They are responsible for collateral damage.
Two: In a hostile networking environment, never ever trust the local network and fire up your ssh or IPsec tunnel to a machine you can trust.
Three: give us IPv6 as soon as possible to get rid of NATs
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