[sf-lug] 200+ emails from test list.

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com) on May 29th:

> The owner of the list is apparently away this Weekend.

No, he was at home.  And reachable via e-mail or telephone.[1]
(I don't always pay attention to public postings on mailing lists,
because there are a lot of other things that need my time.)

Your phrase "the list" (above) might refer either to Test or to SF-LUG,
but I'm the listadmin (and of course site-admin) for both of them, which
is what I believe you mean by "owner".

That's why the listinfo page for both those mailing lists says at the
bottom that rick at linuxmafia.com runs them.

You'll notice that, when you got around to sending me direct mail, I
wrote back telling you it was just malicious spam (and CC'ing SF-LUG 
on a correct suspicion that you were also complaining there).

> I don't know what sparked the episode but I recieved more than 200
> emails in the last 24 hours as someone tried to change my
> subscription to the test at linuxmafia.com.  I finally gave up and went
> to the site and unsubscribed myself.

Yes, I see that /var/lib/mailman/logs/subscribe includes:

  May 29 21:13:55 2023 (2513) test: deleted bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com; via the member options page

> I did not initiate this action to unsubscribe from
> test at linuxmafia.com.  I have no clue as to whoever might have done
> that.

Some malicious spambot.  There's essentially nothing preventing a bot
from submitting unsubscribe requests for a mailing list member via
either Mailman's Web command interface or its e-mail command interface.  
Fortunately, such malicious attempts to force-unsubscribe someone else 
will not succeed unless the target user absent-mindedly "confirms" the 
unsubscribe request, whereupon Mailman accepts the premise that you
really do wish to leave the mailing list, and implements it.

Bots can also attempt to submit any/all sorts of other changes to a
subscriber's options, e.g., enable/disable delivery, change suscription
password, toggle plaintext/HTML, etc., etc.  But any such request 
is _not_ implemented unless the subscriber "confirms" it.

So, in short, just bot-generated spam.  Because Internet.

Bobbie, you've now been on the Internet quite a long time.  If you've
not encountered malicious bots trying to mess with people before now, 
I envy you.  But, seriously, was this difficult to figure out?


[1]My cell phone number is public.  You know where to look.