Turning off List Subscription?

[Joe Brockmeier]

Hi all,

For whatever reason, we're seeing a fair number of complaints that
people are being spammed by subscription requests. It looks like there's
some sort of script hitting a number of mailman installations and
sending subscribe requests for a variety of email addresses.

I have no idea what this accomplishes for the person(s) behind the
bot(s) but it's annoying people and AFAIK we don't have a good way of
blocking it.

We could cut this off at the pass by turning off the ability to
subscribe, but that means we'd have to process subscription requests
manually and some folks might not subscribe if they have to jump through
additional hoops. But I don't think the subscription rate is
particularly high for this list - so that may be a minor issue.

Thoughts? I hate to make things more complicated, but I also would like
our list software not be abused.

Best,

jzb
-- 
Joe Brockmeier | Principal Cloud & Storage Analyst
jzb(a)redhat.com | http://community.redhat.com/
Twitter: @jzb  | http://dissociatedpress.net/

[Robert 'Bob' Jensen]

It comes with the territory of being a list admin IMO.

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 9:42 AM, Joe Brockmeier <jzb(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hi all,
>
>  For whatever reason, we're seeing a fair number of complaints that
>  people are being spammed by subscription requests. It looks like there's
>  some sort of script hitting a number of mailman installations and
>  sending subscribe requests for a variety of email addresses.
>
>  I have no idea what this accomplishes for the person(s) behind the
>  bot(s) but it's annoying people and AFAIK we don't have a good way of
>  blocking it.
>
>  We could cut this off at the pass by turning off the ability to
>  subscribe, but that means we'd have to process subscription requests
>  manually and some folks might not subscribe if they have to jump through
>  additional hoops. But I don't think the subscription rate is
>  particularly high for this list - so that may be a minor issue.
>
>  Thoughts? I hate to make things more complicated, but I also would like
>  our list software not be abused.
>
>  Best,
>
>  jzb
>  --
>  Joe Brockmeier | Principal Cloud & Storage Analyst
>  jzb(a)redhat.com | http://community.redhat.com/
>  Twitter: @jzb  | http://dissociatedpress.net/
>
>
>  --
>  marketing mailing list
>  marketing(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  List info or to change your subscription:
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing

[Joe Brockmeier]

On 03/23/2015 11:31 AM, Robert 'Bob' Jensen wrote:
>  It comes with the territory of being a list admin IMO. 
I admin several lists - this one is getting a much higher than usual
rate of requests. Not the usual smattering - more of a firehose.

Best,

jzb
-- 
Joe Brockmeier | Principal Cloud & Storage Analyst
jzb(a)redhat.com | http://community.redhat.com/
Twitter: @jzb  | http://dissociatedpress.net/

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 23 March 2015 at 15:46, Joe Brockmeier <jzb(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  On 03/23/2015 11:31 AM, Robert 'Bob' Jensen wrote:
>  > It comes with the territory of being a list admin IMO.
>
>  I admin several lists - this one is getting a much higher than usual
>  rate of requests. Not the usual smattering - more of a firehose.
>
>  Best,
>
>  
We are going to put in a fix hopefully soon. It may cause some issues. I
can get you a list of the thousands of accounts spammed in case we need to
write an apology to them. [MOst of them get subscribed 1000 times each]


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.

[Joe Brockmeier]

On 03/23/2015 05:54 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>  
>  
>  On 23 March 2015 at 15:46, Joe Brockmeier <jzb(a)redhat.com
>  <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>  
>      On 03/23/2015 11:31 AM, Robert 'Bob' Jensen wrote:
>      > It comes with the territory of being a list admin IMO.
>  
>      I admin several lists - this one is getting a much higher than usual
>      rate of requests. Not the usual smattering - more of a firehose.
>  
>      Best,
>  
>  
>  We are going to put in a fix hopefully soon. It may cause some issues. I
>  can get you a list of the thousands of accounts spammed in case we need
>  to write an apology to them. [MOst of them get subscribed 1000 times each]  
Thanks much! I'm debating whether another email is a good idea :-) But
please do let me know if you have a list of accounts. Thanks!


-- 
Joe Brockmeier | Principal Cloud & Storage Analyst
jzb(a)redhat.com | http://community.redhat.com/
Twitter: @jzb  | http://dissociatedpress.net/

[Ankur Sinha]

On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 21:44 -0400, Joe Brockmeier wrote:
>  
>  Thanks much! I'm debating whether another email is a good idea :-) But
>  please do let me know if you have a list of accounts. Thanks! 
I found this in the mailman commit list:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mailman-coders/mailman/2.1/revision/1371

It's meant to tackle bots. I can't figure out how to use it, though (or
they've figured out how to get around this too).
-- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha

[Ankur Sinha]

On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 10:42 -0400, Joe Brockmeier wrote:
>  For whatever reason, we're seeing a fair number of complaints
> that
>  people are being spammed by subscription requests. It looks like
>  there's
>  some sort of script hitting a number of mailman installations and
>  sending subscribe requests for a variety of email addresses. 
I don't think we can do much about this. If it's possible, maybe add a
message to the subscription confirmation e-mail that says:

"If you did not request to subscribe to this mailing list, it's probably
a spam bot that is submitting your e-mail address to different mailing
lists. Please disregard this e-mail and keep an eye on where you give
out your e-mail address."

I see an old thread upstream that discusses the issue, but I didn't see
a solution. A suggested solution is to set up iptables filters and
things like spamassassin, but we'll have to speak to the infra team
about that.
-- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha

[beta tester]

If they dont want let them unsubscribe theres not much that can actually be
done.
On Monday 23 March 2015, Ankur Sinha <sanjay.ankur(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 10:42 -0400, Joe Brockmeier wrote:
>  > For whatever reason, we're seeing a fair number of complaints that
>  > people are being spammed by subscription requests. It looks like
>  > there's
>  > some sort of script hitting a number of mailman installations and
>  > sending subscribe requests for a variety of email addresses.
>
>  I don't think we can do much about this. If it's possible, maybe add a
>  message to the subscription confirmation e-mail that says:
>
>  "If you did not request to subscribe to this mailing list, it's probably
>  a spam bot that is submitting your e-mail address to different mailing
>  lists. Please disregard this e-mail and keep an eye on where you give
>  out your e-mail address."
>
>  I see an old thread upstream that discusses the issue, but I didn't see
>  a solution. A suggested solution is to set up iptables filters and
>  things like spamassassin, but we'll have to speak to the infra team
>  about that.
>  --
>  Thanks,
>  Regards,
>  Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"
>
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
>  

-- 
Regards,
Dilip Khanolkar,
[phone].

[Joe Brockmeier]

On 03/23/2015 12:26 PM, beta tester wrote:
>  
>  If they dont want let them unsubscribe theres not much that can actually
>  be done. 
They're not subscribed. There's some bot or something that's
auto-filling the form to request a subscription - so they don't actually
subscribe, they just get the confirmation.

Problem is, it looks like anybody getting this from us is also getting
sent to a bunch of other mailman lists - so the effect is a bunch of
(what seems to them to be) spam.

The other reason I think we might consider turning this off for a while
- if enough people are getting this, it means there's some percentage
just clicking some variation of "mark as spam" -- which could result in
traffic from our lists getting a higher spam score.

Best,

jzb
-- 
Joe Brockmeier | Principal Cloud & Storage Analyst
jzb(a)redhat.com | http://community.redhat.com/
Twitter: @jzb  | http://dissociatedpress.net/

[Chris Roberts]

+1 to jzb's idea of turning it off. The only thing I would like to add is that we add
to to marketing join wiki page for the mailing list that there is a manual approval
process so there might be delays.  Just so we don't deter future contributors.

Chris


Sent via the Samsung Galaxy Note® 3, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone


-------- Original message --------
From: Joe Brockmeier <jzb(a)redhat.com&gt;
Date:03/23/2015 2:10 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: marketing(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
Cc:
Subject: Re: Turning off List Subscription?

On 03/23/2015 12:26 PM, beta tester wrote:
>  If they dont want let them unsubscribe theres not much that can actually
>  be done. 
They're not subscribed. There's some bot or something that's
auto-filling the form to request a subscription - so they don't actually
subscribe, they just get the confirmation.

Problem is, it looks like anybody getting this from us is also getting
sent to a bunch of other mailman lists - so the effect is a bunch of
(what seems to them to be) spam.

The other reason I think we might consider turning this off for a while
- if enough people are getting this, it means there's some percentage
just clicking some variation of "mark as spam" -- which could result in
traffic from our lists getting a higher spam score.

Best,

jzb
--
Joe Brockmeier | Principal Cloud & Storage Analyst
jzb(a)redhat.com | http://community.redhat.com/
Twitter: @jzb  | http://dissociatedpress.net/

[Chris Roberts]

To the* autocorrect and fat fingers--

Sent via the Samsung Galaxy Note® 3, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone


-------- Original message --------
From: Chris Roberts <chris.roberts(a)croberts.org&gt;
Date:03/23/2015 2:17 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: jzb(a)redhat.com, Fedora Marketing team <marketing(a)lists.fedoraproject.org&gt;
Cc:
Subject: RE: Turning off List Subscription?

+1 to jzb's idea of turning it off. The only thing I would like to add is that we add
to to marketing join wiki page for the mailing list that there is a manual approval
process so there might be delays.  Just so we don't deter future contributors.

Chris


Sent via the Samsung Galaxy Note® 3, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone


-------- Original message --------
From: Joe Brockmeier <jzb(a)redhat.com&gt;
Date:03/23/2015 2:10 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: marketing(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
Cc:
Subject: Re: Turning off List Subscription?

On 03/23/2015 12:26 PM, beta tester wrote:
>  If they dont want let them unsubscribe theres not much that can actually
>  be done. 
They're not subscribed. There's some bot or something that's
auto-filling the form to request a subscription - so they don't actually
subscribe, they just get the confirmation.

Problem is, it looks like anybody getting this from us is also getting
sent to a bunch of other mailman lists - so the effect is a bunch of
(what seems to them to be) spam.

The other reason I think we might consider turning this off for a while
- if enough people are getting this, it means there's some percentage
just clicking some variation of "mark as spam" -- which could result in
traffic from our lists getting a higher spam score.

Best,

jzb
--
Joe Brockmeier | Principal Cloud & Storage Analyst
jzb(a)redhat.com | http://community.redhat.com/
Twitter: @jzb  | http://dissociatedpress.net/

[Gabriele Trombini]

In data lunedì 23 marzo 2015 18:17:19, Chris Roberts ha scritto:
>   we add to to marketing join wiki page for the mailing list that
> there
>  is a manual approval process so there might be delays.  Just so we  
don't
>  deter future contributors.
>  
>  Chris
>   
I can do that as soon as you've turned off the list subscriptions, filing a 
ticket.

There are several pages reminding mktg ML:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fedora_marketing_project
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Tasks_and_roles

Are there any others?

I'm looking at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Marketing.

Gabri

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 23 March 2015 at 08:42, Joe Brockmeier <jzb(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  Hi all,
>
>  For whatever reason, we're seeing a fair number of complaints that
>  people are being spammed by subscription requests. It looks like there's
>  some sort of script hitting a number of mailman installations and
>  sending subscribe requests for a variety of email addresses.
>
>  I have no idea what this accomplishes for the person(s) behind the
>  bot(s) but it's annoying people and AFAIK we don't have a good way of
>  blocking it.
>
>  We could cut this off at the pass by turning off the ability to
>  subscribe, but that means we'd have to process subscription requests
>  manually and some folks might not subscribe if they have to jump through
>  additional hoops. But I don't think the subscription rate is
>  particularly high for this list - so that may be a minor issue.
>
>  Thoughts? I hate to make things more complicated, but I also would like
>  our list software not be abused.
>  
So it looks like someone has decided to use a botnet to subscribe 4000+
addresses to marketing over and over again. The ips are all over the world
so it is not going to be easy to block so I am guessing it will be best to
turn off subscribe until we can find a better solution. This might be
multiple ones as someone seems to be doing every person in @qq.com and
another set is doing other email sites.

-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.

[Joe Brockmeier]

On 03/23/2015 04:19 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>  
>  So it looks like someone has decided to use a botnet to subscribe 4000+
>  addresses to marketing over and over again. The ips are all over the
>  world so it is not going to be easy to block so I am guessing it will be
>  best to turn off subscribe until we can find a better solution. This
>  might be multiple ones as someone seems to be doing every person in
>  @qq.com <http://qq.com> and another set is doing other email sites.  
Well, that's it. They're definitely off my Christmas card list.

Hmmm. After looking, I'm wondering if we can turn off subscriptions via
the Mailman interface. The Googles suggest you have to remove the
page(?!) entirely.

Anybody with stronger Mailman-fu know how to shut off the firehose?

Best,

jzb
-- 
Joe Brockmeier | Principal Cloud & Storage Analyst
jzb(a)redhat.com | http://community.redhat.com/
Twitter: @jzb  | http://dissociatedpress.net/

[Mark Terranova]

Ty for pointing this out. Your point about spam is well taken.

It's great seeing this team gel :)

-MD



>  On Mar 23, 2015, at 1:27 PM, Joe Brockmeier <jzb(a)redhat.com&gt;
> wrote:
>  
> > On 03/23/2015 04:19 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> > 
> > So it looks like someone has decided to use a botnet to subscribe 4000+
> > addresses to marketing over and over again. The ips are all over the
> > world so it is not going to be easy to block so I am guessing it will be
> > best to turn off subscribe until we can find a better solution. This
> > might be multiple ones as someone seems to be doing every person in
> > @qq.com <http://qq.com> and another set is doing other email sites.
>  
>  Well, that's it. They're definitely off my Christmas card list.
>  
>  Hmmm. After looking, I'm wondering if we can turn off subscriptions via
>  the Mailman interface. The Googles suggest you have to remove the
>  page(?!) entirely.
>  
>  Anybody with stronger Mailman-fu know how to shut off the firehose?
>  
>  Best,
>  
>  jzb
>  -- 
>  Joe Brockmeier | Principal Cloud & Storage Analyst
>  jzb(a)redhat.com | http://community.redhat.com/
>  Twitter: @jzb  | http://dissociatedpress.net/
>  
>  -- 
>  marketing mailing list
>  marketing(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  List info or to change your subscription:
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing