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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!hao!woods
From: woods@hao.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: senduuname (was: patch #5 for 2.11 news src)
Message-ID: <575@hao.UCAR.EDU>
Date: Thu, 12-Mar-87 04:15:05 EST
Article-I.D.: hao.575
Posted: Thu Mar 12 04:15:05 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Mar-87 05:12:28 EST
References: <43143@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> <5864@amdahl.UUCP>
Reply-To: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 25
Summary: Other problems besides security holes


   Since we are a government research (NSF funded) facility, and all employees
have to sign a contract saying that anything they develop while working here
is public domain, we can hardly be excessively concerned with security. 
   However: I frequently see mail messages coming from sites that recently
issued a senduuname request to us getting queued for sites that we do not
really talk to. We have a number of sites that have "Never" in the "when-to-
call" field in the L.sys file. They are there for a variety of reasons; 
typically, when we have a need to contact that site for a particular reason
(for example, "isi", the main machine at Integrated Solutions, Inc., the 
maker of this machine, where we can file bug reports via uucp), we change
the call time field, mail a message to the appropriate alias on the remote
host, execute a uucico to them, and change it back to Never. We do NOT maintain
regular mail links to these hosts, but they are in our L.sys file (and hence
get reported by senduuname). This results in INCORRECT mapping information which
people attempt to use. These messages do not "bounce"; they just sit on our 
disk taking up space and causing the person who sent it to wonder what the hell
happened (and resend it, compounding the problem). I for one am glad senduuname 
is going away.

--Greg
-- 
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