Re: OT: ATM Blackhole listed

[Michael Lindner <mikell@optonline.net>]

On Wednesday 14 January 2004 09:24 pm, B. Bainbridge wrote:
> Um...I'm getting about 3 to five spam messages from the list per day.
> Am I the only one?

You are not the only one. There is a security hole in the list software that 
allows a spammer to bypass all the membership checks and any other anti-spam 
features of the list, and broadcast directly to list members. The good news 
is that the spammers aren't getting any feedback about list member addresses, 
so if the hole is plugged, they are gone. The bad news is that I have been 
unable so far to convince the shore.net support folks to install a fix for 
the problem.

The hole was discovered with the extensive help of two list members (whom I 
will be proud to credit if they don't object to having their names plastered 
all over :-) I am also working with them to find a better solution. We have 
some ideas, which we hope to be able to implement over the next couple of 
weeks.

I apologize to all list members for the inconvenience, but please hang in 
there a little longer! In the meantime, try to avoid opening the SPAM 
messages, and whatever you do don't reply to them! People receiving the 
digest have it better and worse. They can't filter out the SPAM messages, but 
on the other hand, the messages that have been "digested" should be 
relatively safe to look at.

Clear skies.
-- 
Michael Lindner
http://www.starastronomy.org
http://home.att.net/~mikel http://www.atmsite.org
http://www.starastronomy.org/TelescopeMaking/faq