🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 17 Nov 1997 23:15:24 -0500, afn23950@pop3.afn.org (Follower of
the Clawed Albino) announced:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>In article <34741e6b.4170729@news.enter.net>,
>felonyphil@ITSPAMBLOCKrocketmail.com (Phil Oliver) carved on the cave wall:
>>On Mon, 17 Nov 1997 01:05:36 -0500, afn23950@pop3.afn.org (Follower of
>>the Clawed Albino) announced:
>>
>>>   * Apparently, based on discussion with Caputo, he does not consider
>>>     attempts by his users to deliberately flood Usenet groups (either 
>>>     alone or in conjunction with other individuals) as a flood unless
>>>     a script is used.  (He also does not consider whether a user is in
>>>     fact doing this with other persons, considers "morph" accounts as
>>>     separate incidents, and may consider each incident of abuse as a
>>>     separate act [not considering that the person has a history of net.
>>>     abuse]).
>>
>>You're either forgetting or ignoring that many people disagree with
>>your assessment that some of your examples are "flooding".  In your
>>flood reports you included individuals who'd only posted a couple
>>off-topic messages to AHWW in a single day.  *You've* probably posted
>>more off-topic messages than that to n.a.n-a.u in the past 4 hours
>>(and certainly posted more in size).
>
>The posters from alt.net (who, I will note, were NOT alone in this) were
>attempting a flood.  

By no one's definitions but your own.  The only person who's even come
close to actually agreeing with you is Stan Kalisch, and that was
presumably because your mention of a.f.k-m.n made him froth at the
mouth.

>I document this by the following:
>
>1) Upwards of 25-30 messages/day, of which roughly 15-20 were from alt.
>   net, were posted to alt.horror.werewolves daily (excepting the binary
>   floods, where thousands of posts were sent through an open NNTP 
>   server).  Normal traffic on alt.horror.werewolves is 40-60 messages/
>   day *at most*.

25-30 messages a day *is* *not* *a* *flood*.  It's a minor
inconvenience at worst.  I read lots of newsgroups where single
individuals post more messages per day than that, and 25-30 "noise"
posts a day isn't bad for a newsgroup.  alt.edgar averages about 1
on-topic post a year, so by your definition, if I post there once a
day I'm "flooding".

>   Towards the end, posts were also affecting alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.
>   die which has upwards of 10 posts/day.

Complaining about off-topic posts in a JOKE group is the true height
of lunacy. 

>2) As I have stated, this was in fact part of a *coordinated* attempt to
>   drive regulars off alt.horror.werewolves.   I honestly do suspect, based
>   on previous attacks, that if more open NNTP servers were available the
>   attack would be FAR more severe. 

What they might have done is not relevant to a UDP discussion.

>   Furthermore, the stated intent of the entities *was* that of a flood.

Not relevant again.  ISPs have no responsibility to sanction their
users based on intent.  Maybe they were planning on flooding the group
eventually, but they didn't so alt.net bears no responsibility in the
matter of "flooding".

>  The intent of the list was to replace alt.horror.werewolves 
>   because *it was being made unusable*.

See above.

FYI, 250kb posts of private e-mail correspondence that has nothing to
do with the topic of net abuse makes news.admin.net-abuse.usenet
unuseable. 

>4) This is the latest in a series of attacks that have occured since 
>   November 1996, which have been targeted largely at myself.  

How you can consider 25 or 30 posts per day an "attack" is beyond me.
25-30 posts a day to a newsgroup is the Usenet equivalent of flicking
a booger on someone.  The majority of us wipe it off and be done with
it.  

>   In essence,
>   this is the latest episode of an ongoing DOS attack aimed at
>   alt.horror.werewolves.  

alt.horror.werewolves is a legal entity?  Which state provides
newsgroups with legal protection?  Please let me know because I
wouldn't want to be charged with murder the next time I rmgroup.

>   (This is one factor of many that has led to me contacting law
>   enforcement over this matter.  

Have you called the FBI and the Attorney General in 2 states again
because people are posting messages to Usenet that you don't like?
If you can humor me a bit, I'd really like to know how the exchange
goes.  I envision something like this:

<FBIAgent1> FBI, Tom speaking.
<Windigo> Hi, I'm calling to report a federal computer crime.
<FBIAgent1> Hold on, I'll transfer you to the computer crimes
division.
<FBIAgent2> Computer crimes.
<Windigo> Yes, I'm calling to report a federal computer crime.
<FBIAgent2> What seems to be the problem, ma'am?  Pedophiles trying to
pick up young kids again on the 'net?
<Windigo> No sir, something far worse.  People are posting lots of
messages to a newsgroup I read that have nothing to do with the topic
of the group!  As many as 25 or 30 a day!  This is part of a
coordinated effort to harass me and my family and many others.
<FBIAgent2> Hold on, let me transfer you.
<FriendlyNurse> Bellevue Hospital, psychiatric ward.

You have a *serious* problem if you can't accept the fact that alt.net
(and the rest of the rational world) doesn't consider this a flood.
After you wrote to alt.net and they decided not to take action, you
should have been done with it.  Repeatedly threatening civil and
criminal action makes you look like an idiot, and calling the FBI and
other law enforcement agencies not only makes you look like an even
bigger idiot but also wastes their time.  Threatening a UDP against
alt.net makes you look like a Kook of the highest caliber.

>   At this point, it is crossing the line to harassment and a persistent DOS attack.

Yes, I'm sure alt.horror.werewolves feels quite harassed at having
received 25-30 noise posts per day.

>5) As I also stated, there are issues that complicate things quite a bit
>   in this situation.  There is evidence that the attacks are meant as an
>   attempt at harassment aimed at myself and at other folks.  The persons
>   responsible for this have harassed family members of targets at times,
>   including my family (the listserv-bombing of my fiance and a revenge
>   spam targeted directly at Petrea Mitchell's father).  There is also
>   other net.abuse going on by at least one of the parties involved.

More complete and total irrelevance.  alt.net has absolutely no
responsibility to take action based on your conjecture. 

The only thing that might be relevant is if the party mentioned in the
last sentence is using his/her alt.net account to commit net abuse,
but I haven't seen any evidence as such.

>6) What Caputo has not detailed--many of the posts were reposts of random
>   FAQs, reposts of articles from NANA*, reposts of articles from alt.
>   fan.karl-malden.nose, etc.  

If there were hundreds or thousands of these articles, you'd have a
point.  But the minute scale of this does not constitute a DOS attack.


>  The "meowbot" reposted one article no less than four separate times,

BI of 4?  UDP!  UDP!  

>7) Over 100 articles (out of 280-odd) on alt.horror.werewolves were from
>   alt.net at the end of this round.  This is from alt.net *alone*; this
>   does *not* count other sites that were abused in the attacks. 

100.  Whoopdee fucking doo.  Grow the hell up!  There's a world of
difference between "posting a lot" and "flooding".   This one's almost
as good as the time Fluffy accused me of spewing alt.config when I was
accountable for about 10% of the traffic there (posting about 5-10 of
the 50-75 articles a day).

And you're accounting for about 30% of the diskspace in n.a.n-a.* on
my server right now, so let's UDP airnews.net.  

>   These were on Airnews' server, which holds posts for approximately 2
>   weeks, and during the period of ~25 October to 5 November (when the
>   flood ended, roughly). 

TINF.

-Phil Oliver

--
"[Phil Oliver is] the 20 year old punk who, with the
aid of his idiot pal, have managed to piss off more people
than Boursy/Grubor combined."
Steve Day in <61u1sm$ln5$1@ccnet3.ccnet.com>