Re: List service interruption

On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 08:52:16PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> To follow up on my own message... the problem was greater than the
> viruses alone.  The server www.freeciv.org was sending mail (likely
> virus mail) with forged From addresses.  The complete.org server (which
> hosts the mailing list) would respond with "450 sender domain must
> resolve" (a measure to trap just such problems.  This, unfortunately,
> meant that the www.freeciv.org server would continue to try sending
> these messages.
> 
> It got to the point where, at times, I would receive many of these
> attempts *per second* from the www.freeciv.org server.  I decided to, on
> a temporary basis, permenantly reject all mail from that server to get
> all these viruses out of the system.  (That ban was in place for a total
> of about 5 minutes... Hopefully that will clear things up.)

I toasted almost all of the mailq based on some grepping.

> 
> I do not know why www.freeciv.org is sending these weird virus messages;
> the To: line seems to be random people under the freeciv.org domain.
> Perhaps somebody can check on that.
> 
> Thanks,
> John
> 
> On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 07:26:09PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I received a message today from someone indicating that the Freeciv
> > lists were down.  Indeed, that was the case.  The culprit appears to be
> > the recent spate of viruses.  The mail server at complete.org is
> > configured to limit the number of simultaneous SMTP connections it will
> > serve, as a way to keep the mail system from taking down everything
> > else.  The system was so flodded with viruses that this limit was hit
> > for the first time ever.  Your message may have not made it to the
> > server (in which case, it will likely be delivered later), or it may
> > have made it but could not be delivered.  I have now raised the limit,
> > which appears to have made everything happy again.
> > 
> > If you wrote a message to a FreeCiv list, I suggest waiting
> > approximately four hours; if it has not shown up by then, you should
> > resend.
> > 
> > My apologies for the inconvenience.
> > 
> > -- John
> > 
> 

-- 
Paul Zastoupil