List Flooding

[Hud Nordin]

Christmas, I discovered I was the victim of a mailing list flood;
someone forged my subscription to hundreds of mailing lists.

I quickly created procmail filters to divert the flood to /dev/null.
Took me 5 minutes. Be prepared. Pbbbbbbb!

In scouting about, I found a Usenet article that grouped some victims:

> Newsgroups bit.listserv.lstsrv-l
> Message-ID <961225.0950...@VM.MARIST.EDU>
>
> If you run any open lists without confirmation, you may have gotten the
> following bulk subscriptions today
>
> 76042...@COMPUSERVE.COM ask...@MICROSOFT.COM
> bb...@FREENET.CARLETON.CA cme...@SWCP.COM
> cru...@WELL.COM feed...@MTV.COM
> gro...@SDSC.EDU h...@NETCOM.COM
> jaar...@AOL.COM j...@OPUS1.COM
> k...@MEMBERS.IGLOU.COM kor...@JOVANET.COM
> love...@AOL.COM minut...@AOL.COM
> m...@SEIDEN.COM mtv...@AOL.COM
> neu...@IW.COM ro...@BUCHANAN.ORG
> ro...@CBN.ORG ro...@DUKE.ORG
> todd...@USA.NET vjoh...@PSYBER.COM
> yoma...@AOL.COM

I recognize a few of them from ARS: jaarobin, koreenb, vjohnson.
(Crunch is the famous hacker/cracker Cap'n Crunch. Askbill: Gates? Kkk:
I can imagine. Mtvnews: huh? Various roots: CBN/Pat Robertson? Pat
Buchanan? David Duke?)

If the perpetrator of this low act is reading here: Why?

I can't figure out the pattern. Anyone else?
--
Hud Nordin <h...@nordin.com> Silicon Valley / The City of Sunnyvale / California

[Hud Nordin]

In article <hudE31...@netcom.com> I wrote:
>Christmas, I discovered I was the victim of a mailing list flood;
>someone forged my subscription to hundreds of mailing lists.

[Snip, including a list of co-victims.]

>I can't figure out the pattern. Anyone else?

I found out, from free clues, Brock Meeks' CyberWire Dispatch, and then
the Web.

It's being called another act of the Unamailer (aka xchaotic) who
apparently gained notice back in August for a similar attack.

At http://www.winmag.com/people/dmethvin/xchaotic.txt, I found a
manifesto linked to the August attack, that included rationales for the
choices of victims. Some were attacked because they were scientologists,
spammers, or net jerks. Most were opinion leaders of some stripe:
politicians, authors, journalists, net legends.

I can't wait for Manifesto II. I had better not be misidentified as a
scientologist!

I had always appreciated Unix procmail for its ability to keep the
occasional kook out of my hair. I now appreciate its performance as a
prophylactic for when half the Net is trying to get into my mailbox.

I suppose the scientologist victims have it even easier. They can just
use their awesome OT Powers to sort their mail.