From: kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: [news.admin]  Re: Articles violatating newgroups charter
Originator: kadie@eff.org
Organization: EFF mail-news gateway
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 14:00:21 GMT


Newsgroups: news.admin
From: news@cse.iitb.ernet.in (News Administration)
Subject:  Re: Articles violatating newgroups charter
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1992 10:55:53 GMT

In article <1992Jul13.223839.10459@opencon.com> news@opencon.com (News Admin) writes:
|   As a reader of newsgroups, and as a administrator, few newsgroup violate
|   their Charter, for example soc.culture.indian, inclosed is the article.
|   Is there a way news administrators, especially in the universities, admin
|   to put up statements saying not to post any FLAMES, and if they see any
|   to warn the students/users/employees,etc. of such behavior....

				[...]

Perhaps many sites have seen this article in news.admin.  The interesting
point is that this article also had a "Control" field which said:

	rmgroup soc.culture.indian

I am a new Usenet site administrator.  I wonder, can one be so cavalier
about issuing "rmgroup" messages?  I know it does no real harm, since it
only generates a mail message to the administrator, but I wonder what the
intention was in any case.


Also, I wonder whether what we saw in news.admin is authentic.  There is a
message in my "control" area, which has a body which seems identical, but
whose headers are different.  Here, I reproduce the header of the version
which was meant for human consumption, i.e. in news.admin.  Note that there
is no name anywhere (in both versions) of any human.  The "From:" header
doesn't help.

| Xref: jogin news.admin:1558 news.groups:3114 news.misc:243
| Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups,news.misc
| Path: jogin!iitb!sangam!uunet!uunet!psinntp!opencon!news
| From: news@opencon.com (News Admin)
| Subject: Articles violatating newgroups charter
| Message-ID: <1992Jul13.223839.10459@opencon.com>
| Summary: Any way to control "Flame" messages
| Keywords:  Controlling Flame/Hate Postings
| Organization: OpenCon Systems, Inc.
| Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1992 22:38:39 GMT
| Lines: 64



And here is what I found in my control area (I've split the "Path:" header
across multiple lines; otherwise it is as I found it).  Note the "Path:"
header and the interesting (to me! :-) components in it.  What, for
instance, is "malgudi.oar.net"?   I will be very surprised if there is such
a place in the US.  Malgudi is the name of a fictitious Indian village,
immortalised in the writings of a noted Indian novelist.

| Path: jogin!iitb!sangam!uunet!uunet!timbuk.cray.com!shamash!uc.msc.edu!
| 	noc.msc.net!umn.edu!paperboy.micro.umn.edu!
| 	magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!
| 	malgudi.oar.net!caen!nic.umass.edu!noc.near.net!
| 	snorkelwacker.mit.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!psinntp!
| 	opencon!news
| From: news@opencon.com (News Admin)
| Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups,news.misc
| Subject: Articles violatating newgroups charter
| Summary: Any way to control "Flame" messages
| Keywords: Controlling Flame/Hate Postings
| Message-ID: <1992Jul13.223829.10459@opencon.com>
| Date: 13 Jul 92 22:38:39 GMT
| Control: rmgroup soc.culture.indian
| Organization: OpenCon Systems, Inc.
| Lines: 63
| Approved: news@opencon.com

Looks like someone has probably forged a control message, using as far as
possible, the same header lines from an earlier posting by ... himself?

What could it be?

If we wish to trace the probable origins of such a message, with the
cooperations of the Usenet site administrators of the various sites, is it
possible?  For instance, I know that the message originated somewhere
outside India, because our logs show that to be the case.  (In the Path
header, "jogin" is my site, "iitb" is a site on my campus, "sangam" is the
national Usenet gateway machine ("sangam" means confluence :-), and "uunet"
is the only outward link to sangam.)  If our logs show that the article
came into sangam from uunet, can we conclude that it originated in or
beyond uunet?

Hoping for some insight into how these things work...
							Shuvam
-- 
--- Shuvam Misra ----------------------------------- news@cse.iitb.ernet.in --
--- Usenet Administration ----------------------------------------------------
--- CompSc&Engg, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay ----------------------


-- 
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent EFF; this is just me.
 =kadie@eff.org, kadie@cs.uiuc.edu =
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.news