RE: [cobalt-security] autoresponders from hell

["Drage, Nicholas" <nickd@xxxxxxxxx>]

> I've noticed this problem before, but this is getting 
> ridiculous. Everyone, please use alternative email addresses to subscribe
to 
> mailing lists or just don't use auto-responders! Can someone write this
into all 
> the list FAQs?

Posts from the list are sent with "Precedence: bulk", auto-responders
shouldn't reply to those should they?

It's also got an "X-Been-There" header too, I don't know how widely that's
honoured or parsed by MTAs.

> Secondly, isn't there someone out there who can stop this? 
> Can't Mailman be configured to filter out anything with "autoresponse" in
the 
> subject line???

Might accidentally censor something it shouldn't, and AFAICT it's crappy
auto-reply software so really that should be fixed [1].  In a case like this
ringing the mail-admins is usually the best bet, I can't do it, in the wrong
time zone, and by the time you all read this it'll probably be fixed.

And this is kind of on-topic isn't it, seeing as a pretty effective Denial
of Service attack is going on right now.

And to be evil for a moment, considering how bad this software seems to be (
"Stalker Internet Mail Server 1.8b8" it seems ) I wonder what happens if you
send an email to jim@xxxxxxxxxxx from jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[1] For particularly violent values of "fix".

-- 
Nick Drage - Security Architecture - Demon Internet - Thus PLC
As of Wed 20/06/2001 at  9:00 
This computer has been up for 6 days, 15 hours, 56 minutes, 1 second.