---------- 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