IP: Resolution of the "fagcancel" flap

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>


An unknown culprit yesterday launched a massive attack on Jewish,
Muslim, Asian, feminist, and sexual minority discussions on the Net,
removing thousands of messages from newsgroups including
soc.culture.jewish, soc.culture.indian, and soc.feminism.


The attacker's technique, similar to what the Scientologists used
against alt.religion.scientology, was to spread forged "cancel"
messages ostensibly from the original authors instructing that their
posts be deleted. The "kikecancel" messages seem to come from UUNET;
the "fagcancel" messages came from Cottage Software Inc., a tiny
Internet provider in Tulsa, Oklahoma.


William Brunton, the president of Cottage Software, was a bit harried
when I spoke with him this evening. "I can say it did originate from
my site. A user originated it and we've stopped it. It's been turned
over to the appropriate authorites. As far as I'm concerned, the
matter is closed," he said.


Brunton said the slew of "cancel" messages started Sunday morning. He
learned about the attack that evening. "As soon as I found out about
it, they were vaporware." He declined to elaborate, but from what I
was able to gather the attacker simply sucked through all the messages
in the offending newsgroups and attempted to delete each one.


The text of the forged "fagcancel" and "kikecancel" messages says:


  These cancels are issued as a service to the Internet providers not
wishing  
  to carry articles from sexual perverts and deviants. Sites that do not
wish  
  to take advantage of this free service can easily can opt out of these     
  cancels by "aliasing out" the fagcancel pseudosite.


  These cancels are issued as a service to thInternet providers not wishing
  to carry articles from persons of Jewish persuasion. Sites that do not wish
  to take advantage of this free service can easily can opt out of these
  cancels by "aliasing out" the kikecancel pseudosite.


(Of course, unless the operator of a news server takes special steps
to "alias out" and therefore ignore the forged cancel messages, the
offending messages will be deleted.)


Other cancels include: twatcancel ("females of the species"),
geekcancel ("computer geeks and eggheads"), towelheadcancel ("persons
of Muslem [sic] persuasion"), and slanteyecancel ("persons of Oriental
extraction").


Though the attacks centered on a handful of newsgroups, they affected
scads of others. One cancel message (<cancel.51ug0p$jnn () solaris cc vt edu>)
was designed to remove messages from dozens of newsgroups:


  Newsgroups: wash.politics,us.politics.bob-dole,us.politics.abortion,
  tx.politics,triangle.politics,talk.politics.theory,talk.politics.misc,
  talk.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.guns,talk.politics.crypto,
  talk.politics,seattle.politics,scruz.politics,ri.politics,or.politics,
  ny.politics,nj.politics,ne.politics,mn.politics,dfw.politics,dc.politics,
  co.politics,ca.politics,ba.politics,az.politics,alt.politics.white-power,
  alt.politics.usa.republican,alt.politics.usa.newt-gingrich,
  alt.politics.usa.misc,alt.politics.usa.constitution,
  alt.politics.usa.congress,alt.politics.usa,alt.politics.reform,
  alt.politics.radical-left,alt.politics.perot,alt.politics.nationalism.white,
  alt.politics.media,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.immigration,
  alt.politics.homosexuality...


Now that Brunton from Cottage Software has kicked off the offending
user, he's more philosophical than he was at this time yesterday:
"There's really nothing you can do. You don't know you have a bad
apple until a worm crawls out of it."


-By Declan McCullagh (declan () well com), 9/23/96


###


Some of the cancel messages are stored in:
  ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/wo/wotan/cancel.gz








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