Anyone have any idea what this is about? Anon.penet.fi is being bombarded by an endless flow of these... Julf ------- Forwarded Message X-Envelope-To: na26436 Received: from hydra.acs.uci.edu by anon.penet.fi (5.67/1.35) id AA21686; Thu, 4 Nov 93 16:42:48 +0200 Received: by hydra.acs.uci.edu id AA24199 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for na26436@anon.penet.fi); Thu, 4 Nov 1993 05:47:52 -0800 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 1993 05:47:52 -0800 From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON@hydra.acs.uci.edu> Message-Id: <199311041347.AA24199@hydra.acs.uci.edu> To: na26436@anon.penet.fi Subject: Returned mail: Return receipt ----- Transcript of session follows ----- ----- Message header follows ----- Received: from orion.oac.uci.edu by hydra.acs.uci.edu with SMTP id AA24194 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for <athomas@hydra.acs.uci.edu>); Thu, 4 Nov 1993 05:47:52 - 0800 Received: from relay2.UU.NET by orion.oac.uci.edu with SMTP id AA28377 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for <athomas@orion.oac.uci.edu>); Thu, 4 Nov 1993 05:47:50 - 0800 Received: from toad.com by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA04164; Thu, 4 Nov 93 08:45:13 -0500 Received: by toad.com id AA23509; Thu, 4 Nov 93 05:37:38 PST Received: by toad.com id AA23503; Thu, 4 Nov 93 05:35:10 PST Return-Path: <jik@security.ov.com> Received: from pad-thai.aktis.com ([192.231.148.11]) by toad.com id AA23499; Th u, 4 Nov 93 05:35:05 PST Errors-To: na26436@anon.penet.fi Received: from gza-client1.aktis.com by pad-thai.aktis.com (8.6.4/) with ESMTP id <IAA14324@pad-thai.aktis.com>; Thu, 4 Nov 1993 08:35:27 -0500 Received: from localhost by gza-client1.aktis.com (8.6.4/4.7) id IAA28688; Thu, 4 Nov 1993 08:35:26 -0500 Received: from relay2.UU.NET by pad-thai.aktis.com (8.6.4/) with SMTP id <WAA26264@pad-thai.aktis.com>; Wed, 3 Nov 1993 22:05:39 -0500 Received: from toad.com by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA29104; Wed, 3 Nov 93 22:02:57 -0500 Received: by toad.com id AA18024; Wed, 3 Nov 93 18:57:31 PST Received: by toad.com id AA18012; Wed, 3 Nov 93 18:56:25 PST Received: from punisher.caltech.edu ([131.215.48.151]) by toad.com id AA18007; Wed, 3 Nov 93 18:56:20 PST Errors-To: na26436@anon.penet.fi Received: from alumni.cco.caltech.edu by punisher.caltech.edu (4.1/DEI:4.41) id AA29935; Wed, 3 Nov 93 18:56:14 PST Received: by alumni.cco.caltech.edu (4.1/DEI:4.41) id AA20137; Wed, 3 Nov 93 18:52:10 PST Date: Wed, 3 Nov 93 18:52:10 PST Message-Id: <9311040252.AA20137@alumni.cco.caltech.edu> To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, cypherpunks@toad.com X-Mail-Duplicate-From: nobody@alumni.cco.caltech.edu Comments: This message is NOT from the person listed in the From line. It is from an automated software remailing service operating at that address. Please report problem mail to <hal@alumni.caltech.edu>. Subject: Re: ANON: mail concerns From: Eternal Optimist <na26436@anon.penet.fi> Return-Receipt-To: na26436@anon.penet.fi Reply-To: na26436@anon.penet.fi Errors-To: na26436@anon.penet.fi ------- End of Forwarded Message
It appears that last few fields in the returned header are responsible for the problems. Julf's mail also indicates why cypherpunks has had a couple of duplicate posts recently. The offending headers are "Return-Receipt-To" and "Errors-To". The "Return-Receipt-To" field is triggering a reaction in some other mailers to bounce back acknowledgement of the mail. Now cypherpunks@toad.com was in the "To" list, and it appears that acknowldegement mail was sent out to cypherpunks again. All this time the "Received" fields are increasing. When there are too many of them--the number is mailer dependent, but is typically 17-20, some mailer along the chain bounces the message. It sees the "Errors-To" line and sends back the bounce to penet. My guess is that a significant fraction of the cypherpunks list is sending anon.penet.fi back one message each per "Return-Receipt-To". Not all that many mailers honor return receipts, but all mailers bounce mail with too many Received fields. Hence the first return receipts sent didn't generate nearly so many errors as all the bounces from the second time the message went out to the list. How we solve this? Well, let's list the mailers involved in the particular message you sent. The first one was the anonymous remailer at caltech. The message from there was directed to cypherpunks, so that's toad.com. From there it travelled through uunet (toad.com's mail gateway for a large amount of traffic) to somewhere in the gza/aktis/ov group of machines. Somewhere in there the return receipt was generated; note the "Return-Path: <jik@security.ov.com>" field. This mailer generated a message back to cypherpunks (toad.com) again. One copy of this went to a machine in uci.edu, which bounced it to penet. I'd say that the mailer which generated the return-receipt back to cypherpunks (assuming that happened) is the most proximate cause. Cypherpunks was in the To: field, not the From: field, and even though your standard reply might go to both parties (assuming the To: field is larger than just you), a return receipt should only be propagated to the original sender. toad.com is a secondary cause, since the Return-Receipt-To: field should probably not be propagated out to a mailing list, but rather acknowledged or discarded before mailing list expansion. Also, since toad.com is not running reasonable mailing list software (which we don't have), it's not detecting duplicate messages sent back to the list and discarding them. Eric
ACK! I'm not responsible for the "Return-Receipt-To" in that message. However, I am responsible for resending the message to the mailing list. Our mail2news gateway (we gateway cypherpunks into a local newsgroup) bounced it because of a duplicate From line, and when I resent it to the gateway alias, I screwed up and sent it to the list as well. I'm sorry for the extra traffic on the list. I'll be more careful in the future. Jonathan Kamens | OpenVision Technologies, Inc. | jik@security.ov.com
participants (3)
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hughes＠ah.com -
Johan Helsingius -
Jonathan I. Kamens