Spam research....No, not the canned meat....

This note is specifically directed to readers of rec.pyrotechnics.

I believe that it is important for everyone reading the newsgroup to
realize that the same denial of service attacks that are hitting
rec.pyrotechnics are also impacting dozens of other newsgroups, both
within the Big 8 hierarchy and the alt hierarchy. Even some of the
hard core hacker websites like alt.2600 are undergoing these
attacks.

Two principal sources, as distinguished by their posting
characteristics have been identified as the sources. Both appear to
have news feed access which allows them to bypass the filters in place
when most of us post using an ISP. One identifies his posts as "MI5",
and the other uses a randomized word string generator that follow
sentence structure rules, but posts total nonsense using randomized
false ISP idents. By posting directly into the news feed stream, these
posts fake any source identity they wish, and are difficult to filter
at the news server receiving end.

Fortunately here on the east coast of the US, most of these messages
pass through a "privately owned system" located in Reston, VA, which
conspiracy buffs have long spectulated is owned by the NSA. Trust me
in saying if that is the case, the source of these disruptive messages
is already known, since every repeater in the transmission path leaves
it's own fingerprint, and the path to the post's origin is readily
traceable. Every experienced computer user know how to trace back the
origin of a email, but it become more complex in tracking something on
the news feed back to its origin, since the news servers do not
preserve this information (at least not generally). Still a news
server does have this capability...but why it has not be employed to
track down and eliminate the source of these disruptive posts remains
a mystery... To even the NSA? (Not possible IMHO...these guys are
VERY good at what they do.)

Recently, sci.physics has become subjected to these attacks (I haven't
yet checked sci.physics.moderated), but now things are getting
serious, and it may be time to call in the government's big guns and
put this thing at rest. While rec.pyrotechnic in no way affects
national security, dispuption of so many of the hard core sci
newsgroups definitely may.

Members of this newsgroup may wish to contact their US Senators and
Representitive to bring this matter to their attention. It has ceased
to be a harmless game.

Harry C.

.

Relevant Pages

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