[wp-hackers] Double Postings? Am I seeing double?

[Roy Schestowitz]

___/ On Thu 16 Mar 2006 09:01:08 GMT, [ Les Bessant ] wrote : \___

>
>>> Suspicously all the "double postings" have the following in them:
>>>
>>> - -------------------- m2f --------------------
>>>
>>> <snip what="junk">
>>>
>>> - -------------------- m2f --------------------
>>>
>>> And come from the same server - http:// <burp /> /forums/
>>>
>>> Someone is reposting posts back to the lists!
>>>
>>> Thankfully it seems to have stopped
>>
>> Given the sporadic lag in between such posts, it would be wise to assume
>> this was spam. It forged senders' addresses to get past moderation and used
>> identical content for  disguise. The forger was not even wise enough to
>> strip off the appended footer. It must the price of having decent PageRank
>> in the archives.
>>
>> Roy
>
> Given that they came in a burst, I'd say it was much more likely that a
> misconfigured, or temporarily malfunctioning mail server remailed them. I've
> seen this happen a lot when a server is used to collect mail from a POP
> account. Server sees that the message is addressed to an address that's not
> on its domain (the list address in this case) and "helpfully" sends it out
> again.
>
> Often happens with a badly set up Microsoft Small Business Server. It's
> great fun when the original recipients of a mailing get hundreds of copies
> of the same message.

That's a possibility too, I agree.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/10/server_bug_cripples_dublin_law_firms/

"The problem was attributed to an improper server configuration, causing
five servers to send out more than half a million emails to Dublin
solicitors. The deluge of mail originated with a publishing company's email
marketing message, which was sent to solicitors. When some solicitors
attempted to reply to the mail, a fault in the solicitors' configuration of
Microsoft Small Business Server sent the original email to their entire
email database tens of thousands of times."


Best wishes,

Roy

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz      | Windows O/S: chmod a-x internet; kill -9 internet
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