Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!apple!chuq From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Cabals, Committees, Voting, ad nauseum Message-ID: <28784@apple.Apple.COM> Date: 11 Apr 89 17:24:15 GMT References: <647@ultb.UUCP> Organization: Life is just a Fantasy novel played for keeps Lines: 33 > could be easily inserted into the news packet format, I believe) to > prevent problems of scattered sections of old dead groups... >All control messages are, as you put it, automatic. newgroup and >rmgroup can be disallowed at each site, and reserved for root >intervention, at compile time. For good reason. USENET is (surprise!) not a secure network, which is why rmgroups require administrator intervention. Do *you* really want to set up the system so that anyone with a basic knowledge of USENET can come in and delete your directory tree for you? You can't even safely set it up to only accept rmgroups from (say) Greg Woods -- because, as is shown every April Fools day, anyone can become Greg Woods in an untraceable way. Newgroups are not generally disabled simply because that's an additive function, not a desctructive function -- it's a lot easier to come in and repair the damage that a "newgroup ba.wobegon" does over the weekend than a "rmgroup comp.sys.unix.wizards" would do. Knowing the underlying structure of USENET, I'm not entire sure how you would build in a reasonable level of security into automating control messages. It would require some kind of public key encryption, and it would *still* be possible, with access to the source and one instance of the key, for a motivated person to forge out a usable control message. Besides, writing all that encryption code would be a major undertaking. Chuq Von Rospach -*- Editor,OtherRealms -*- Member SFWA chuq@apple.com -*- CI$: 73317,635 -*- Delphi: CHUQ -*- Applelink: CHUQ [This is myself speaking. No company can control my thoughts.] USENET: N. A self-replicating phage engineered by the phone company to cause computers to spend large amounts of their owners budget on modem charges.