Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!ig!uwmcsd1!leah!itsgw!nyser!njin!aramis.rutgers.edu!porthos.rutgers.edu!webber From: webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Sendsys fiasco Keywords: Webber net abuse Message-ID:Date: 24 Jun 88 03:01:33 GMT References: <106@carpet.WLK.COM> <4552@killer.UUCP> <1192@pyrnj.uucp> Distribution: na Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 76 To: romain@pyrnj.uucp In article <1192@pyrnj.uucp>, romain@pyrnj.uucp (Romain Kang) writes: > As a netnews neighbor of rutgers, I find it very unusual that > would have been passed to my site from > rutgers, especially if it is truly a forgery. However, a clever > miscreant could have done it with NNTP or UUCP if he/she/it has > such connections to rutgers. Yeah. The other thing pointing to someone close to the Rutgers system is that this all seems to have begun near the time Mel was boarding a plane for Usenix (he skipped the tutorial sessions). Ain't idle speculation fun. > articles coming through that path also. It may be noteworthy that we > received the 4 messages in the order 3 4 2 1, all through different Well, we recieved them like: Script started on Thu Jun 23 22:25:45 1988 porthos[2,1] pwd /aramis/usr/spool/news/control porthos[2,2] grep net.rare * 9495:Message-ID: 9496:Message-ID: 9497:Message-ID: 9499:Message-ID: porthos[2,3] grep Date: 949[5679] 9495:Date: 20 Jun 88 22:20:20 GMT 9496:Date: 20 Jun 88 22:20:20 GMT 9497:Date: 20 Jun 88 22:20:20 GMT 9499:Date: 20 Jun 88 22:20:20 GMT porthos[2,4] grep Path: 949[5679] 9495:Path: aramis.rutgers.edu!rutgers!webber 9496:Path: aramis.rutgers.edu!njin!princeton!udel!rochester!cornell!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!rutgers!webber 9497:Path: aramis.rutgers.edu!njin!princeton!udel!rochester!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!ucsd!sdcsvax!rutgers!webber 9499:Path: aramis.rutgers.edu!njin!princeton!udel!rochester!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!pasteur!ames!rutgers!webber porthos[2,5] ls -l 949[5679] -rw-r--r-- 1 news 255 Jun 21 20:52 9495 -rw-r--r-- 1 news 347 Jun 21 21:45 9496 -rw-r--r-- 1 news 326 Jun 21 21:45 9497 -rw-r--r-- 1 news 319 Jun 21 21:49 9499 porthos[2,6] exit porthos[2,7] script done on Thu Jun 23 22:29:30 1988 > I cannot judge whether Dr. Webber is innocent or guilty. I find it > disappointing that Webber, someone with a gift for original thought > (such as USENET could use) has decided to apply himself to creating > havoc, rather than productive efforts. The same may be said for the > originator of the sendsys messages. Actually it is not clear that the originator of the sendsys message actually meant to create havoc. Most people seem to have become aware of all of this because of the message rutgers sends out about the alias going away rather than from the actual sendsys itself -- and it is not clear whether the orignator was aware of that aspect of it all. Certainly people who want Usenet to turn into a moderated collection of comp groups where people can post requests saying to send directly to them since they don't actually read the groups (i.e., all of Usenet like comp.sources.wanted), such people would certainly view my vision (or more accurately, my memory) of Usenet and any ``productive'' efforts toward its encouragement as ``havoc.'' I view unrestricted online information of ANY kind as a rare and precious resource of the net and anything that tries to stem that flow (even if the attempt is backed up with alot of mumbo jumbo about S/N ratios) as criminal. The flow, however, does not need to flow as fast as it currently does [and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the quality-seekers didn't find that a slower net with fewer transfers per night made resulted in more interesting postings]. Of course, the ``current administration'' made its reputation on improving the speed and reliability of mail and news simultaneously and seems to have difficulty with the concept that while this might have been a nice thing for mail, it was the worst thing they could have done for news. C'est la vie. ---- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)