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)