Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!plaid!chuq
From: chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Forgeries: a suggestion for bringing them under control
Message-ID: <39832@sun.uucp>
Date: 25 Jan 88 04:28:48 GMT
References: <1861@epimass.EPI.COM>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: Fictional Reality, uLtd
Lines: 87

>And the flame wars will be endless.

Some would claim they already are, but that's beside the point.

>Some suggested administrative steps:

>1) If you get caught forging a message impersonating another poster,
>except for April Fool's day which we'll continue to allow as a day to
>fool around a bit, you're off the net, forever.  Sites not enforcing
>this rule (after being asked to) lose their feed.

Um, this nice, but how to you plan on enforcing it? You going to fly out and
personally dismember their modem? (that, by the way, would be a criminal
act. I don't condone it, even when justified). You going to hold your breath
and turn blue until they do what you want?

This even assumes that you can figure out who did it, which I'll claim isn't
likely, and be able to prove it to someone in authority, which I'll claim is
even sillier -- and you can find someone in authority who cares.

>2) If a knowledgeable news administrator sees a message with a forged
>Approved:  header or other such shenanigans, that news administrator
>can (and should be encouraged to) issue a forged Cancel message, but
>the text of the cancel message should contain the true name of the
>person doing this and an explanation of why it's being done.  

This assumes, of course, that the forged header doesn't also have the forged
real name and the forged real explanation.... But then, we're expecting the
forgers to play by the rules and do things that we can track down, like
putting their names and phone numbers in the forged message.

Here's an alternate set of rules I think is more workable.

1) All forged messages should have the name of the forger in them. They
   should have the word 'forgery' somewhere in the subject line.

2) All people who commit forgery will place a large, green and purple star
   on their forehead, so when we see them at usenix we'll know not to talk
   to them.

3) Any priest who hears of a Usenet forgery in confession shall immediately
   break his vows and post such knowledge to the net so the backbone can
   take appropriate action.

4) Forgers, in appropriate action, shall have their fingers cut off at the 
   second knuckle, but only those fingers that it can be proven were used to
   type the actual message (you can do this by seeing what letters are in
   the message and what fingers caused them to be typed -- there is no
   reason to punish an innocent pinky, you know.)

5) Most important, sane, decent, mature people won't forge, because it's a
   stupid, immature and childish thing to do. The rest we have to live with,
   since Usenet is insecure and non-securable.

6) Folks who come up with plans to fix Usenet should look at the
   practicality and implementability of them (and realize that, since the 
   net is going on 10 years old, and realize that since these problems
   aren't new, believe it or not, if there were simple, implementable plans
   to fix some of these problems, they would have been thought of and
   implemented before now).

And, Joe, before you decide that I'm being exceptionally hard-ass at you,
I'll just say that I've seen this proposal before many times. I've made it
once, long ago. The practical reality of Usenet is that we tried a policy of
getting malfunctioning sites off the net, and it's unenforcable. We're lucky
to be able to FIND malfunctioning sites, much less someone in charge of them
or someone upstream of them -- and the reality is, the upstream folks know
they're malfunctioning, and don't care. Trying to track down and prove
forgery is infinitely harder than that, and the upstream folks will STILL
not care. It don't work.

Unless you want to come up with a secure Usenet (and I've tried, and the
security holes are a little too endemic in the design of the software -- to
do it would require major changes in the transport layer that would make
transferring news quite painful, especially at the current volume levels),
you'll have to live with the idiots.

chuq





Chuq "Fixed in 4.0" Von Rospach		chuq@sun.COM		Delphi: CHUQ

                       What do you mean 'You don't really want to hurt her?'
                                    I'm a Super-Villain! That's my Schtick!