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From: brode@math.lsa.umich.edu (Jon Brode)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: BART: part 2
Summary: repost with clarification
Keywords: BART Atari archive umich
Message-ID: <1991Feb12.181433.3661@math.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: 12 Feb 91 18:14:33 GMT
References: <1991Feb11.054514.25449@terminator.cc.umich.edu> <1991Feb12.165927.21941@pa.dec.com>
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Organization: University of Michigan Math Dept., Ann Arbor
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This is a re-post with clarifications of my original article "Bye Bye BART".
The original has been cancelled.

The BART mail server is no longer available at atari.archive.umich.edu.
My understanding is that it is down for good, but I haven't had an 
opportunity to really discuss it with the system administrator yet.
Perhaps he will permit it back with some additional patches to the
quota system. I don't know.

As for Herr Kaiser, he is directly responsible for the server being shut
down, but my characterizations of his actions as malicious were pre-mature.
Due to some unusual circumstances, some of which were very clearly explicated
by Brain Reid, it appears that I misjudged him initially. I have received
several messages from Hans apologizing for the trouble he caused and some
messages from his administrators backing him up. I apoligize for the harsh
words, it appears most of them were unjustified.

At this point, I don't know whether I believe his innocence or not. Even
taking the unusual circumstances into account, he was still using the
archive beyond the posted limits. However, I'm not in a position where
I'm able to ascertain his innocence or guilt so I will no longer pursue it.

Please stop sending him mail.

Below is my response to Brian Reid's article for those who are interested.

Jon Brode  --  jon@atari.archive.umich.edu	brode@math.lsa.umich.edu
University of Michigan, Atari archive manager

In article <1991Feb12.165927.21941@pa.dec.com> reid@wrl.dec.com (Brian Reid) writes:
>There is a "per-user" quota for each day. The problem is that when you send
>the mail using a mail program that encodes the date and time of the message
>in the "From" field, then every message looks like it came from a different
>user. 

Exactly. We knew the quota system was unsohpisticated, but it should have
been sufficient to keep the average user in check. The problem of keeping
a hacker from abusing a totally automatic mail archive server is very
difficult, and perhaps impossible to solve for now.

>As a result, the Michigan archive server tried to process all of them
>at once, and, evidently, melted into a pile of slag.

Actually, we received them over the course of 4 days so it seemed like
he was sending them interactively. I probably would have been suspicious
of mail problems if all 93 messages has shown up within minutes of
each other.

>I will happily offer the services of the excellent network
>programmers at DEC Western Research to help ensure that the Michigan archive
>server does not meet this fate again.

Most appreciated. Perhaps you can share with me your thoughts on parsing
incoming From: lines so that everyone has to play by the rules.

>Mostly I want people to know that this was in no way the fault of Hans Kaiser. 

I'm not sure I'd go that far, but my initial posting about the extent
and intent of the archive abuse were definitely in error.

>If you have sent Mr. Kaiser (or Herr Kaiser, as he probably prefers to be
>called) a nasty message, it might be civil to send him another one letting
>him know that, now that the facts are known, you aren't so angry any more.

I concur.