Internet Users Under Pressure

I subscribe to a few email lists. One of them, a low traffic affair, is Sky and Telescope Magazine’s comet bulletins. When a new comet is discovered, they’re right there with information… often more than I want or can comprehend for comets too dim to be seen by anything I’ll ever get my hands on.

However, just seeing this stuff interests me, and from time-to-time gives me something extra to talk about on TV. Martha would say, “It’s a good thing.”

Somehow today, this list opened up and began spewing virus and mail bounce information. That was it. Before long dozens of people were sending messages which said, “unsubscribe” to the list, and those messages were getting forwarded to everyone.

There are instructions on how to unsubscribe, but that seemed too challenging. Within a few hours, out came the do-gooders, telling people that every message they sent was another that everyone got.

More unsubscribes based on that.

Then came the loudmouths who berated the unsubscribers.

More unsunscribe notes followed that.

Now, it’s a mix… but a larger quantity of email than I’ve gotten since the list began! In fact, I’ve now gotten over 200 emails from this mess-up. Here’s as typical message at this stage:

I’ve yet to see anyone from Sky and Telescope chime in, or shut it all off. It’s funny to watch, but a royal pain in the butt to deal with.

Blogger’s note: On May 3 I received an email explaining the whole affair. Read on for what actually happened.

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This Is SKY & TELESCOPE’s AstroAlert for Comets

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[This message went out to our AstroAlert list for comets on April 27th. It

has come to our attention that some list subscribers did not receive that

message. Please accept our apologies if this is a duplicate of an e-mail

you’ve already received.]

As you know (unless you subscribed to this list only within the last two

weeks), we recently had a serious problem with our AstroAlert system. On

Monday, April 12th, we issued an alert about the discovery of Comet

Bradfield. By Tuesday morning the 13th, list subscribers had received

dozens more e-mails from our list server, some containing mysterious virus

or security warnings, and some containing pleas from other subscribers to

stop sending mail. The problem worsened throughout the day until we finally

figured out how to stop it that afternoon.

Some list members suggested that the problem was a virus. It was not; the

original alert was clean. Others suggested that the problem was a failure

to secure our Majordomo listserv software against unauthorized postings. It

was not; only Sky & Telescope’s editors and our AstroAlert partners may

post alerts, and only if they supply a valid password. The problem was a

malicious attack by an unknown person who exploited an obscure security

hole elsewhere in our e-mail system and made it possible (temporarily) for

members’ messages meant solely for us to be bounced back out to the entire

list. This hole has now been found and plugged, so the problem should not

recur.

If you tried to unsubscribe from the comet list by replying to one of the

messages you received from the list on April 13th, you did not succeed

(obviously, since you’re reading this). Instructions for how to unsubscribe

from the list are at the bottom of this message, as they are at the bottom

of every AstroAlert.

All of us at S&T apologize for the maddening inconvenience that our runaway

AstroAlert system caused on April 13th. Thanks to those of you who

weathered the storm with good humor.

Meanwhile, Comet Bradfield is putting on a good show in the dawn sky. For

details, see our online story at

http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/objects/comets/article_1238_1.asp

And here are links to some nice pictures of Comet Bradfield taken in recent

days:

http://www.abmedia.com/astro/current/bradfield-c2004f4.html

http://home.t-online.de/home/konrad.horn/index.htm

http://cometography.com/lcomets/2004f4.html

— Rick Fienberg, Editor in Chief, Sky & Telescope