The saga of hipcrime's emailBot (fwd)

[Geoff White <geoffw@precipice.V-site.net>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 13:25:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: Geoff White <geoffw@precipice.V-site.net>
To: cyperpunks@toad.com
Cc: Geoff White <geoffw@precipice.V-site.net>,
    Stark Raving Math <robert@precipice.V-site.net>
Subject: The saga of hipcrime's emailBot

Hi Folks,

	Some of you may know me as I was once on cypherpunks about
	2 years ago, other pressing matters (like starting an ISDN
	ISP :) caused me to unsub but I've still been with you in spirit :)
	Anyway, I run Virtual Sites (v-site.net) Having been squeezed
	out of InterNex by various methods that we won't go into here.
	Anyway V-site primarily hosts web-space although we also have
	a bunch of ISDN and Frame Relay customers as well, but our primary
	business is web-hosting.  Robert of hipcrime.com is a "customer"
	of mine, actually I gave him a free account so that he could learn
	Java, CGI and other forms of web programming, I do give accounts
	to groups, organizations and people who show promise and Roberts
	fractal creations are outstanding.  anyway it's not my nature to
	be policeman and to look over the shoulder of my customers, as long
	as they don't draw attention to themselves I leave them alone.  I was
	surprised that Robert brought such attention to himself the other day.
	I fully understand where you are coming from with rgards to the 
	remailers being a "touchy situation" at best but also bear in mind
	that Robert has pointed out an important "weakness", Even though the
	website is no longer dispensing the offending applet, Javacode last
	forever, so the applets that are free will continue to work until they
	deleted. Since they reference the senmail daemon on 
	tarnover.v-site.net, the only recourse that I have is to shutdown
	the sendmail daemon but other customers rely on that daemon for
	their businesses. So what is to be done? I think this exposes 
	a serious problem with Java applets and with the remailing system.
	I'm willing to do my part to help stem the tide but bear in mind that
	this kind of thing can and will happen again unless a better
	way to guard against this type of thing is implemented.



	
					Geoff White
					WebMaster
					Virtual Sites