TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Serious Vandalism on the Net Over the Holiday

Serious Vandalism on the Net Over the Holiday

Patrick Townson (ptownson@telecom-digest.org)
Sun, 26, Dec 2004 18:00:00 EST

It appears that over the Christmas holiday, some kiddie who got a
new toy computer to play with decided to do a number on many (most?
all?) newsgroups with several thousand trashy, stupid messages,
repeated over and over in various newsgroups.

I received messages from readers of c.d.t. who thought *I* could
possibly do something about it. This newsgroup got hit pretty badly,
but news.admin.net-abuse.email got it worst of all, I understand. I
had some email this afternoon with John Levine about this mess, and he
responded:

> This is quite unusual. It's been over a year since there's
> been a spew like this, and there wouldn't be now except that
> there appears to be one well-connected host in Europe whose
> management has taken the week off.

Then I asked:

> But even if the managment took the week off, didn't they have any
> bots on duty?

John then replied:

They have a dusty server that is misconfigured and lets anyone post
with fake credentials. Most likely it has been sitting there for a
couple of years, unused and unnoticed. The correct thing to do with
it is to pull the plug.

The group that's under attack, news.admin.net-abuse.email is
unmoderated so there's no approved line to handle.

I found a few dozen cross posts to c.d.t and sent out cancels for
them. As far as I can tell, the flood stopped this morning so
apparently they woke someone up.

Regards,

John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Mayor
"I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And I hope for all of you, the
Christmas holiday was as joyful and pleasant as it has been for me!
PAT]

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