| From: | "Robert A. Hayden" <hayden@*******.MANKATO.MSUS.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | ADMIN: Apparent Apology from Forger/April Fools Mailings |
| Date: | Thu, 7 Apr 1994 00:21:18 -0500 |
person that spoofed a mailing to the lists announcing that I was
resigning.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1994 16:36:28 -0500
From:Sorry@***
Subject:
Robert, I'm sorry for all the hassle I've caused you. I now realize that what
I did was wrong and that I shouldn't have done it period. I know there's no
way to undo what I did, but I didn't think it would have such a large impact.
Actually, what sparked me to do it was your spoof-mailing everyone on all the
SR lists....
Again, sorry......
=======================================================================
Note that the above message was also spoofed.
As long as I have your attention, and the above messages alludes to it, I
will take a moment to explain the 'spoof-mailing' that I am accused of
doing.
For those of you on ShadowRN, you received a message on April 1 (april
fools day) from me saying that you had been deleted from the list by
'MONICA@**.COM'.
This was my april fools joke. Many people actually were fooled by it, in
light of the panicy mailings I got and the subsequent cries of 'DOH!!'
Here is what I did, and as you will see, in the end it involved no
spoofed messages or forged SMTP headers:
1) I reviewed the RN list
2) I greped out and created a distribution of the 250
subscibers
3) I created a message addressed to 'april_phools@*******...'
This is an unknow user or alias and bounced back to me, but
was passed on to all the recipients in the 'TO:' line.
4) I then 'Blind Carbon Copied (BCC)' the message to the
distribution I created. This is a 'legal' protocol and
prevents recipients seeing who else the message went to.
5) I then wrote the deletion note and mailed it to all 250 of the
people.
There were at least three indicators that it was an april fools message:
1) Deletion notices come from LISTSERV@*****, not me
2) It was addressed to april_phools@*******.manakto.msus.edu
3) The listowner was listed as MONICA@**.COM. This is a reference
to a cranky AI that lives in the ShadowTalk storyline.
==========================================
In any case, I'm resonably confident that the spoofing of messages to the
list will cease. Some security features recently turned on will serve to
keep unauthorized addresses from posting.
I hope this clears up the problems and confusion the last 72 hours has
brought. I believe that in the end I over-reacted a little bit, but it
also pointed out how suseptiple mail is to forged or spoofed addresses,
and the need to good data authentication (all hail PGP, if only it would
work with LISTSERV).
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
____ Robert A. Hayden <=> hayden@*******.mankato.msus.edu
\ /__ -=-=-=-=- <=> -=-=-=-=-
\/ / Finger for Geek Code Info <=> Political Correctness is
\/ Finger for PGP 2.3a Public Key <=> P.C. for "Thought Police"
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