How can I query Spamhaus's SBL with a domain name?

Question

I want to query Spamhaus's SBL using a domain name. I know this is possible to do because this form (Find SBL Listings by ISP Domain Name) does it and SpamAssassin does it, but I can only seem to get it to work with IP addresses. I took a quick look at the SpamAssassin code, but it has been so generalized that I could probably spend a couple hours tracking down the code that actually does something. Right now I can successfully query SBL for IP addresses like this:

#returns 127.0.0.2, so 208.73.210.0 is on the blacklist
dig +short 0.210.73.208.sbl.spamhaus.org 

#returns nothing, so 72.14.225.72 isn't on the blacklist
dig +short 72.225.14.72.sbl.spamhaus.org

Querying with domain names seems to have something to do with DNS TXT records, but I don't know the right hostname to lookup. When I try something like

dig oversee.net.sbl.spamhaus.org TXT

I don't get any useful information back, but if you search with the form you find that oversee.net is associated with 208.73.210.0 which was reported as spamming on 30-Jul-2009 21:17 GMT.

Answer 1

Domains are in the "Domain Block List", not the SBL. Use dbl.spamhaus.org as the domain suffix.

The particular search you linked to is based on the ISP's domain name, and I don't believe it uses the same DNSBL interface.