Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!ncr-sd!ncrlnk!uunet!mcvax!ukc!stc!idec!marlow!fox
From: fox@marlow.uucp (Paul Fox)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: news.sysadmin
Keywords: Security
Message-ID: <501@alice.marlow.uucp>
Date: 3 Dec 88 12:43:36 GMT
Organization: Reuters Ltd PLC, Marlow, England
Lines: 39

This is a little (large) moan at the News software (2.11 pl 14).
I have something wrong with my news installation, i think i
may be having the same problem as others but it does concern me.

The problem is that occasionally the 'powers that be'
somewhere out in net land pick up my 'sys' file and send me mail
messages telling me I have invalid newsgroups, etc, etc.

They are either requesting a file, I didnt explicitly give
them permission to access (tell me how I can stop it), or
they are executing a shell script on my system I have not given
them permission to. Either way it is WRONG.

My system is my business, not anybody elses. With all this
netland talk of virus's, worms, bacteria, etc, etc people
are doing things to my system I do not understand or have time
to look into.

The reason I mention this is that one of the 'news' control
messages causes my news system to hang. It causes 'rnews' to
hang whilst news is being unbatched. The eventual sypmtom
is that uuxqt runs later on and keeps spawning rnews until
we run out of processes/swap space. This really p**ses
me off.

It p**ses me off because people do things to my system when
I havent explicitly let them and it p**ses me off because
the news software is not bug free.

I hope C-news or News 3.0 is MUCH MUCH better.


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