What is AHBL and what happened to it?

AHBL (The Abusive Hosts Blocking List) was a DNS Blacklist service operated since 2003 by a division of the Summit Open Source Development Group (SOSDG), a developer of open source technologies. The AHBL has been in operation since October of 2003, and was previously known as the Summit Blacklist. Based on data pulled from various sources on the Internet, plus their own custom tracking tools and databases, the AHBL provided a highly useful database of known problematic machines on the Internet for the purpose of being able to tag or reject spam. The blacklist service was shut down on March 29, 2014: their three main DNS zones of data have been cleared out, and their NS records have been removed. The DNSBL zones will be wildcarded on January 1, 2015.

What should I do?

We strongly recommend removing AHBL from your ORF configuration to avoid possible problems.

Removing AHBL from ORF 5 and later versions

1. Start the ORF Administration Tool and connect to the local or remote ORF instance.
2. Navigate to the Blacklists / DNS Blacklists page.
3. Select Abusive Host Blocking List (AHBL) and click the Delete button. Click Yes to confirm.
4. Save your configuration to apply the changes by pressing Ctrl + S or by selecting File | Save Configuration from the main menu.

Removing AHBL from ORF 4.4 and earlier versions

1. Start the ORF Administration Tool.
2. Navigate to the Configuration / Tests / DNS Blacklists page.
3. Select Abusive Host Blocking List (AHBL) and click the Delete button. Click Yes to confirm.
4. Save your configuration to apply the changes by pressing Ctrl + U or by selecting File | Save and update configuration from the main menu.

On a related note, do you have the DNSBL "Not Just Another Bogus List (NJABL Combined List)" enabled in your configuration? Be sure to remove that as well.

Notes

To have ORF configured in the most efficient way possible, please consult our Best Practices Guide. Make sure your current DNS Blacklist and SURBL defintions are up to date, and that you have the recommended blacklists enabled.