It is 6:11 AM and I have not gotten any significant amount of sleep so far since last night. A neighbor's dog had wandered onto our property to bark at a racoon at about 1AM and barked constantly until about 5 am when I got sick of it and went out to investigate.

I only logged onto the internet this morning so that I could grab the complaint form from our county Animal Control web site. The form is now filled out and will be mailed today. Since I had my PC on already, I thought, "what the heck", and I checked the messages on the BBS. That's when I discovered the random spam messages from the new user "empegbot".

For those who haven't yet noticed this, this morning there were a handful of new messages on this BBS posted under the name "empegbot". These messages were generated by a computer program which logs onto the BBS without any user intervention and pulls random words from an internal list. Although this is very clever, it clearly crosses the line from being simply an annoyance, and now falls into the category of outright hacking.

Now, most days, I'd locate the user in question, and politely and privately request that he stop. But there were two things that made me do otherwise:

- The aforementioned lack of sleep and general irritation level.
- I saw that it was Yz33d.

So. The following users have now been permanently banned from the BBS:

- Yz33d
- empegbot
- all connections from the IP address range 216.78.183.***

And there was much rejoicing.

If anyone besides Yz33d has an IP address which falls into that range, contact me and we'll see what we can do. Of course, if your address falls into that range, you can't read this message so I have no idea how you'll know to contact me. Oh well, I'm tired and can't think clearly at the moment.

Oh, and by the way, Drakino: I recommend you do the same for riocar.org. I think he's under "Yz33b" on that site.

So. The following users have now been permanently banned from the BBS:

- Yz33d

Please reconsider this. An empeg bbs without Yz33d would seem rather empty and stilted now. He is a valued member of the community, and should not IMO be stifled by other valued members of the community, however temporarily irritable they might be.

Peter

I didn't ban him because he was irritating. If I was going to do that, I would have done so long ago. The ban is because he crossed the line into outright hacking.

There has only been one other ban on the BBS, and it was for the same reason. Although it was a different style of hacking, the other user tried to upload a PHP exploit as a file attachment.

I think "valued" might be going a bit far. How about "tolerated"?

(Barely)

Rob

I didn't ban him because he was irritating. If I was going to do that, I would have done so long ago. The ban is because he crossed the line into outright hacking.

So where did...

Now, most days, I'd locate the user in question, and politely and privately request that he stop.

...come from?

This is, of course, not my board and I cannot overrule you. I can only request politely that Yz33d be reinstated, for the good of the community.

Peter

I have to admit I'm a little shocked... He has been a troll from day 1 but this is something differant all together... He even seemed to be contributing to the BBS by offering suggestions to others...

But if this is true, and I do trust Tony to know whether or not that is the case, I support the decision.

It's one thing to use the BBS as "free hosting" and claim ignorance, but it's another to spam our boards..

PS - So I gotta ask, was he "Osama" or "Satan"?

I will consider this, of course. Let's see how it pans out.

If he's a member of this community then setting a random spam bot loose here is tantamount to crapping on your own front lawn. There's already so much traffic here than you and I, Peter, are about the only empeg people who regularly read the BBS now. ALMOST every post that yz33d has made is a troll - list them and see!

Of course, if he sends chocolate I might change my opinion.

Rob

PS - So I gotta ask, was he "Osama" or "Satan"?

Not as far as I can tell. Osama, Satan, and Yz33d are from three totally different IP ranges. However, Yz33d and Empegbot both posted from the exact same IP address within a short period of time, hence my certainty in that particular matter.

Unfortunately, Yz33d is a dialup account with a NATed address, so I had to ban a range instead of just a single address. Hope it doesn't inconvenience anyone else.

He is a valued member of the community

Well, let's drink a toast to diversity of opinion!

I generally have done my best to simply ignore any thread/branch with Yz's ID in it (It helps keep my blood pressure down) but I had to read this thread.

I would not lose any sleep if he hadn't pulled this stunt and remained to post more inane contrarian drivel on the BBS, but he did pull this stunt. I'd expect Tony would react in the same fashion to activity from anyone who wasn't demonstrably ignorant of the consequences of their behavior and of BBS norms, noisy racoon or not.

I don't find this a huge surprise. Some folks with attention-seeking, provocative personalities tend to escalate their behaviors when they get bored.

Thanks, Jim. And by the way, it was the neighbor's dog that was noisy. Racoons are generally quiet.

it was the neighbor's dog that was noisy.

Oh, yeah, sorry! I'm feeling a little fuzzy. I didn't get *any* sleep last night!

(But root-cause analysis suggests that it was still the racoon's fault!!)

(But root-cause analysis suggests that it was still the racoon's fault!!)

That's one way to look at it, I suppose. Then again, there's the school of thought which says that the racoons were living here long before the dogs and the people ever showed up. And besides, Animal Control doesn't have a form to fill out for racoons.

If he's a member of this community then setting a random spam bot loose here is tantamount to crapping on your own front lawn.

True. But I think there's a difference between a bot set to 3,000 posts a day and one set to 3. The former would be an earnest attempt to destroy the board (and no public board, by definition, is defensible against a concerted attack of that type), the latter an exercise for all concerned in learning about trust relationships and the tragedy of the commons. Sure, an admin should have explained matters to the hacker, and deactivated the bot's account (in that order). Deactivating the hacker's account seemed like overkill, that's all.

Mind you, I'd be upset if all 2,200 board members simultaneously wondered how hard it would be to write an empeg bot. It's just that the law of averages makes that pretty darn unlikely. If all 2,200 board members made as many helpful posts per day as Tony Fabris, then the board would be unreadable then, too. Part of being a non-disfunctional community is inclusiveness and diversity.

ALMOST every post that yz33d has made is a troll - list them and see!

A lot of them are trolls (and there some I thought were genuinely offensive). But the ones that aren't trolls are often brilliant, like this one, and (possibly my favourite BBS post ever) this one. I would hate to miss out on such posts in future.

Peter

Greetings!

If it is of any help or concern, I was using Sam Spade tools to track the source ownership. I am behind a firewall at the moment, and cannot look directly.

In any case, it is part of Bell South's ADSL / broadband service. It does not cover the complete band of IP addresses out of Bell South, and it is likely that the address can be reassigned with something outside your block range. It is very likely that blocking this range will lock out other users.

I would also recommend he not be blocked. Granted, the bot is generating spam messages and many of his messages are trolls. But he does add to the discussions somewhat. If he would terminate the bot willingly...

And besides, Animal Control doesn't have a form to fill out for racoons.

QED !

I think there's a difference between a bot set to 3,000 posts a day and one set to 3

..and the internet WORM was supposed to replicate only once an hour. I would have had more faith in RTM's coding ability than Yz33d!

Rob

and the internet WORM was supposed to replicate only once an hour. I would have had more faith in RTM's coding ability than Yz33d!

But empeg-bot was open-sourced: if it had a severe bug, we could have fixed it

Peter

if it had a severe bug, we could have fixed it

So if we let him come back, can we fix Yz33d on the same terms?

Rob

As glad as I am to see the guy gone, I am forced to also consider whether this was the correct thing to do based on two different criteria. (God, I hate defending people I don't like.) First, there's the question of whether that was the appropriate democratic thing to do. I'd have to say that he broke a law, but I don't know that that law is written down somewhere or not. I believe that he probably should have been told to stop and then, if he didn't, been banned. After all, as far as we know, he does have an empeg, and this board is a useful resource for those who do. The other point is whether or not this just wounded him. It's unfortunately possible that he might now come back with a vengeance, which would be an exceptionally bad thing.

On the other hand, the Paranoid Conspiracy Man in me is screaming that this is Tony's cheap and lazy way to deactivate his Yz33d alter ego. But PCM has been known to be wrong.

hehe those posts sound like they were someone elses words not his.

Hmm, well this isn't a democracy so shall we ban Tony, just in case?

Rob

See, now you're combining Hyper-Liberal Democracy Man with Paranoid Conspiracy Man, and that combination never turns out well. Somehow, through methods unclear to me, he tends to turn into Fascist Schizoid Man. (Though I did really love that episode of The Prisoner.)

Tony, given your exact situation, I would have done exactly the same thing.

I'm relatively new to the BBS; I have probably posted a few things that were already covered eons ago. But people were nice enough to explain that to me or even tell me to the answer to my question as opposed to pointing me to it.

I don't know much about Yz33d or how annoying he might be because I haven't been here long and haven't read many posts. (Although, what I have read of his were rather funny.) But I understand that the exact thing he did was wrong, no matter if it was 3 or 3,000 posts.

In fact, I believe I remember a warning when signing up not too long ago, against doing exactly that. So in essence, he knew of the possible consequences when he did what he did, and therefore his punishment is appropriate.

Yes, it would have been kind to give him warning. And I'm sure normally, Tony, you would have done so. But in that situation, as I said, I would have done the same and not let myself feel bad about it for long, if at all.

Justin, you must have joined recently because the "free web hosting" thread was considered his warning in my opinion... (basically, he attached a bunch of html files and linked them together to host a page... eating up bandwidth). He HAS been pretty cool lately, so I could see how you'd think he was kind of a funny guy.

he attached a bunch of html files and linked them together to host a page... eating up bandwidth

I thought the funniest thing about that (which, if you read the page he was trying to "host", was obviously just a neat trick rather than a genuine attempt to get a page hosted) was that Tony got so annoyed about it after it was him who had told Yz33d how to do it in the first place...

Peter

I'm surprised at the amount of defense popping up in favor of our "Deezy" friend.

Whether or not one thinks he "has been pretty cool lately" (and count me among those, by the way), the fact is, he used a scripted exploit against the BBS (opensource or not, childishly simple or not).

If he wishes, he can go try shit like that on Slashdot or something. Let's see how forgiving they are over there.

I didn't understand what happened until I started reading the other posts. I hate that kind of crap. If it is in fact Yz33d, then the punishment is just, however, he denies the accusation in the "Want to buy Button kit but your email fails" post, with "Why would I want to kill anyone (or anything)?". I AM NOT DEFENDING HIM! If Tony says it's Yz33d, then that's good enough for me.

I think that it should be remembered that this board is not just a load of code it is a load of quite cool people Folk like Yz33d are sort of like the village idiot Tolerated but i don't know if we should chuck him out. Slap his wrists somehow.

This ain't slashdot due to the folk, i think that he needs to learn some manners !

Can he still read the board if he is dumped out if so he can send an e-mail and explain his actions.

it was him who had told Yz33d how to do it in the first place...

I only intended that information to be used in reference to making your own BBS icon available. And it was only because Yz33d had been linking an image from Microsoft which tried to set a cookie. I don't think you can blame me in this situation.

Just because I tell someone a piece of public knowledge (especially blindingly obvious public knowledge), doesn't mean that I can be blamed when they use that knowledge for evil.