Looping E-mails Beat The Net Down

Staili writes "Singapore-based women's magazine caused problems when it forwarded its mails to a large list of recipients, mainly mailing lists. In addition to [e-mail], some help and subscribe lists were included; the type of addresses that tend to send out an automatic reply confirming receipt. And the loop was ready." I'm sure anyone who's messed with mail enough has accidentally created a loop or two in their day, but this is really slimey.

Mail chauvinist pigs

[leonbrooks]

I'm guessing that's the magazine's view of us, anyway. (-:

Babelfish rules!

[tangent3]

Oh man, this is just hilarious:

When Drahtmuller contacted savoixmagazine.com's hosting company in the U.S., the situation slipped into the ridiculous as the hosting company tried to reply in Drahtmuller's native German language. "Even though we contacted them in English, they ran their response through Babelfish (translation software) so we couldn't understand what they were saying," he told ZDNet U.K. "In the end we blocked their servers from our mail exchanges. We did what we could but the problem still existed."

Anecdote

[eyeball]

Before my bank's introduced their online banking, you could submit your email address on their site if you wanted to be notified of their beta test. Well, one late Friday afternoon I got an email notifying myself and all the others of the beta test progress. Unfortunately the person sending out the email put as many people as they could fit into the To: address. People started reply-ing to all, saying things like "Please unsubscribe" and complaining about getting so many emails, etc.. Of course because this was sent out on a friday, so this went on all weekend. Hundreds of replies went out by monday, when they asked nicely for everyone to stop hitting reply-all.

Epilogue: I wrote the VP of the company and expressed my concern that if they weren't competent enough to use email, how was I going to trust them with my money online. The VP sent me an apology and a $50 traveler check gift!

Linux developers are clueless

[FarHat]

Its obvious that the women readers of the said magazine have the hots for German Linux developers and they tried to show their interest in them. True it wasn't in the best possible way but they did give a signal which the Suse guys completely misinterpreted. Sad.

Re:Normal

[desertfool]

You've obviously never worked at tech support for a large company. Many of them are idiots.

Babelfished!

[GSV NegotiableEthics]

From the article, the German sysadmin says:

Even though we contacted them in English, they ran their response through Babelfish (translation software) so we couldn't understand what they were saying

You've got to laugh. Rebecca Ore once told of her colleague trying to deal with some francophone Canadian sysadmins. "He just babelfished them until they gave up and started using English."

Kinda like Apple...

[jeremiahstanley]

I bet some choice congressmen would find this kind of thing 'Innovative'...

I know, it's bad...

Sharks

[Skapare]

Even sharks are not that bad. They do sometimes bite each other in a feeding frenzy, but this is much less often than lawyers threatening to sue each other. I love this story. I'm going to send it to all the lawyer mailing lists I know of.

Who owns savoix now?

[Rothfuss]

Drahtmuller's belief was that the system administrators running savoixmagazine.com's server "didn't know what they were doing."

Will the last h4x0r out of the savoixmagazine.com honeypot please shut down the server?

Thanks,

-Rothfuss

Dear Supreme Court...

[rbruels]

Justices of the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Washington, DC 20543

Dear Justices:

Please make it completely legal to spray gratuitous amounts of napalm on spammers.

Sincerely,

Ryan Bruels

We used to do this on purpose

[prockcore]

Sad to say but we used to do this on purpose back in the early nineties.

Invariably you'll send someone an email on a saturday and get an out of office autoreply. We'd find two people who had autoreplies, and fake-mail one of them with the from address of the other one.

Boom, instant loop that would bring down both mail servers in an hour. For added points, do it with 3 or 4 people at the same time (they almost always replied-all). For bonus round, do it with 2 or 3 customer support addresses (the ones that send out a form mail automatically)

Most auto replies these days are smart enough to detect a loop and avoid it.. but back then virtually none of them were.

Could you "bring down the internet" with this trick? No. Could you bring down a few mail servers? Yup.

Uber Security! Der Mann Ja!

[nickynicky9doors]

Das is nicht gut! Vee are in Trabule, Ja
Trabule, Vhat Trabule Vee are in?
Der Dreded Spam LOOP!
Der Dreded Spam LOOP? Vas is Das? Dreded Spam LOOP.
Der Dreded Spam LOOP is making der Mobius Loop look like a kindergarten loolipop
Spam! Endless Spam! Der Endless Nacht has begun Und Vee are DOOMED!
Is der no one, no one who can save us from dis Spam monster?
There is one. ONE. Der is ONE WITH THE FORCE! VEE MUST CALL OUT TO HIM.
ROMAN, ROMAN DRATHMULLER SECURITY UBER GEEK VEE CALL OUT TO YOU IN OUR TIME OF NEED
Roman Drathmuller? He ist gut?
Nein, nicht gut, ROMAN DRATHMULLER IST BAAAAAAAD! JA
Dat sound. He is coming vit der russling sound of newpapers wind blown in der streets of Brazil, ust like Robert De Niro.
I am herring yer call ja und herr I am
Roman, Roman Drathmuller you have come in ust der nich of time. It is der Dreded Spam LOOP. Der Headless Harassment of der Net Vorld.
O Dis is nich gut it has grown too powerful. It is now der Spam Borlag! Der is only von vay vee must BLACK HOLE DER MAILING LIST UND SEND DIS MONSTER BACK TO DER HELL THAT SPAWNED IT!
Der Mailing List it grows ever darker, svirling, svirling into darkness
IT is dying ja dying, Roman, Roman Darthmuller you have saved us!
IT IS DONE! It vill bother you no more

People and their innapropriate use of TO and CC:

[nettdata]

Not much pisses me off more than people that put their entire list of "SPAM" (good or bad) email recipients in the CC or TO field instead of putting them in the BCC field.

Recently, my cousin was one of these abusers, and, being family, was totally fair game for some retribution. He was about 6 weeks away from leaving his job to go back to school, so he emailed his hotmail account a message, and CC'd that message to EVERYONE in his contact list at work, all so it was easier for him to import their addresses into Hotmail. There were over 350 people in this list. If this wasn't bad enough, he mis-spelled his hotmail address on the first message he sent out so he sent a SECOND message.

Well, that was the final straw.

Now, little known to Steve, me, being somewhat of a techie, had acquired his SteveLastname.com domain name as an upcoming birthday present. I proceded to send out an email to EVERYONE on his CC list, pointing out the totally innapropriate way in which Steve had used his email, and made a general call for embarrassing pics, stories, etc., that we could use to shame him.

Well, within 2 minutes, his dad sent in a Christmas pic of Steve when he was 7, his brother sent in his 1st date pic, and friends from work sent in pics and stories from the bar, etc. Each time something new came in, it was put up on his site and the email list was notified. It's interesting to note that the opt-out was included in the first response, and at the end of the day, only 2 guys had done so.

Now, let me fill you in a little bit on the scope of this little prank. You see, Steve was working at the largest investment bank in Canada, and probably 80% of the people on the list were his fellow workers. Well, word spread. Within an hour of the first notification, the site had been hit almost 1,000 times. At the end of a fun, 4 day run, the site had been hit almost 60,000 times (page views). To top it off, the top execs at the company (CEO, CTO, CIO, etc.) all made a field trip at the end of one of their exec meetings to come down and say good-bye to Steve in person. Now, Steve was a little terrified over this attention from the execs, but it was nicely relieved when they proceded to hand him a letter of reccommendation signed by all of them and they all had a good laugh about it.

All in all, it was pretty fun, and Steve was a good sport, but at the end of the day, email abusers still piss me off!