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Grex > Coop11 > #47: Banning a site from Grex; a discussion of when to do this | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 264 responses total. |
remmers
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response 120 of 264:
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Dec 6 23:22 UTC 1998 |
Staff made the decision to ban the site, and on the basis of user
(not member, coop discussions aren't restricted to members) input
is lifting it pending certain outcomes. Quite honestly I don't
know what the 100-odd members would say about it if polled. "Staff"
is appropriate.
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robh
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response 121 of 264:
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Dec 7 00:09 UTC 1998 |
I wouldn't be comfortable with signing it "the Grex membership"
unless we (ack) put it to a vote. "Staff" is fine with me.
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steve
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response 122 of 264:
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Dec 7 03:21 UTC 1998 |
OK, I have the two files ready as p1.m and p2.m for the motd
notice and mail. There were a couple of tense problems which I
fixed. So unless I hear any last minute pleas, like in tel, I'm
firing them off. It just occured to me that I need to weed out
all the accounts that have been deleted, and then I'll be ready
to send them out.
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steve
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response 123 of 264:
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Dec 7 08:02 UTC 1998 |
The block was lifted at 3.00am EST.
It took longer than I had thought it would, sending out 1693
pieces of mail.
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krj
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response 124 of 264:
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Dec 7 13:52 UTC 1998 |
The IIT text in the MOTD scrolls off the top of the screen.
Perhaps it should be moved to the bottom. (Buy two lines by
taking out the Auction line.)
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remmers
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response 125 of 264:
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Dec 7 14:54 UTC 1998 |
The motd was 33 lines long, 9 lines more than "standard" screen height.
I just shortened it to 28 by taking out some blank lines. If the IIT
announcement is moved to the bottom, one of the election announcements
will scroll off, simply creating another problem. Perhaps the IIT
announcement could be reformatted and/or slightly condensed to bring
the total number of lines down to 24?
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steve
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response 126 of 264:
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Dec 7 15:16 UTC 1998 |
I just moved the message down to the bottom of the file. Might
help, a little.
In any event, I don't think the message needs to be there after
tomorrow morning. I think its had an impact--coupled with the email
thats in all the mailboxes I think the message can have a short life
span.
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mta
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response 127 of 264:
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Dec 7 17:33 UTC 1998 |
Yikes, I should have proofread it better. It's almost uninteligible...
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levi
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response 128 of 264:
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Dec 7 22:59 UTC 1998 |
Well iam not exactly sure whether system admin guys will respond to steve's
mails. If the users from this particular site are turning to be vandals in
the near future , the best course of action will be to ban the site once for
all . And there is no question of racism being involved here, since they were
given a second chance to be considerate grex users. Being a grex user of
Indian origin in US , i fully support the grex staff decision to re enact the
ban if it is needed and wouldnt attribute racism to be a factor
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krj
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response 129 of 264:
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Dec 7 23:21 UTC 1998 |
I gather the following, from comments in this afternoon's party:
IIT KGP is a *really* prestigious institution, and we've probably embarassed
the hell out of them with the MOTD. We probably should pull it soon.
One party participant said that IIT does not allow its students to
telnet to other places. Given the furtive responses to staff inquiries
Steve reported in #0, I'm betting that the address in question is a
bootleg gateway. That's speculation, but it smells right.
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steve
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response 130 of 264:
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Dec 7 23:27 UTC 1998 |
Most interesting. It would explain the strange responses I got.
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levi
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response 131 of 264:
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Dec 8 03:44 UTC 1998 |
Well KRJ, iam the one who possibly informed you in the party that IITS doesnt
alow their students to telnet to other sites . Well there are 5 IITS in India
and that's policy of each institution. Moreover the folks who log in from
GE.COm ips also do it without any legal permission from either the Indian
companies they work or for that matter the GE network . In fact its illegal
to use the GE network for telnetting to cyberspace or arbornet. but since
most of the Indian students cant afford to have an email , they use this as
an email facility.
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krj
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response 132 of 264:
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Dec 8 04:15 UTC 1998 |
Levi, yes it was you. Thanks for contributing here. Your response
raises a *fascinating* ethical issue for us here on Grex. I have
started a new item #54 (item:54) for that discussion, so that we
don't drift in the item about the current situation with IIT KGP.
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steve
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response 133 of 264:
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Dec 8 04:42 UTC 1998 |
Thank you for your comments, Levi. Do stick around and participate
here.
Interesting that they can't legally get here, but are anyway.
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rcurl
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response 134 of 264:
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Dec 8 05:41 UTC 1998 |
If there is a bootleg gateway involved, IIT should do something about that
too.
It is a minor matter, but so not to corrupt the spelling of our colleagues
from India: explanation; permanently.
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steve
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response 135 of 264:
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Dec 8 12:08 UTC 1998 |
I fixed those in the text that got sent out. You can proofread the
final version in ~steve/p2.m ;-)
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rcurl
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response 136 of 264:
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Dec 8 16:00 UTC 1998 |
The typos were still in the motd this a.m.
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aruba
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response 137 of 264:
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Dec 8 17:47 UTC 1998 |
I just fixed them in the MOTD, and changed "the Grex" to "Grex".
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steve
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response 138 of 264:
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Dec 9 02:26 UTC 1998 |
oh! in the MOTD--oops. I didn't look at that nearly as much as
looking at the main letter sent to everyone.
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devnull
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response 139 of 264:
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Dec 10 10:27 UTC 1998 |
It seems to me that perhaps configuring newuser to not allow people to
create accounts in the standard way from that site might be an effective
block that wouldn't cause as much trouble for people. You could have some
mechanism to allow people to get accounts with some amount of manually looking
at the request to decide whether to make the account, perhaps.
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remmers
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response 140 of 264:
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Dec 10 12:05 UTC 1998 |
How would that help? I think it's unlikely that vandals would state "Oh
by the way, I'm a vandal" in their account requests.
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steve
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response 141 of 264:
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Dec 10 12:23 UTC 1998 |
Joel, we could (or already do) have a technical mechanism to stop
newuser from creating the account so someone can look at it, but that
is a very fundemental change to the operation of Grex, and one that I
hope we never never do.
For one thing, it would be a heck of a lot of work, looking at
all the requests. On a busy day we'll get 220 new accounts created
here, so you can imagine how much work that would be, if it took
just 30 seconds to examine each one.
But the greater problem with it would be that we'd be in the mindset
to 'examine' people when they came to the door, and I'm not sure that
"wanting" (more like demanding) full identification might not come next.
As it is, the vandals come in with the rest of civil society, and
we haven't had that much of a problem. Certainly there have been some
problems from time to time, but still--and remember, I'm one of the
ones who deals with them--most, the vast majority of people who come
in here are perfectly fine people.
IIT is about the only time I have ever seen a situation where
teaching newuser to do something special with a certain IP address
would be possible. Because that is a gateway, we could block it off
(as we did) or something else, but in thinking about it, that is the
only time I can think of in which the vandals of a certain site have
come in through a guaranteed address.
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samsoft
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response 142 of 264:
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Dec 10 14:49 UTC 1998 |
Pardon My illiteracy in computers. I wanted to ask if there is a way that an
user is restricted to run a executable in his home or tmp directory.Anyway
nobody logs into grex to run his program. But if such a restriction is
possible then maybe noone could run programs which might affect the
performance of grex machine.Ofcourse I might have said a trivial things
infront of the experts but I was wondering if that is possible
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steve
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response 143 of 264:
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Dec 10 19:20 UTC 1998 |
In the case of a malicious program like a fork bomb, it doesn't matter
where the user runs it. So if we restricted a user to their home directory,
they could still run such a thing and hurt the system.
But if I understand your question, the answer is no. There isn't any
way to restrict people from running programs whereever they find them,
without restricting their access to the "shell", which is one of the neat
things about Grex.
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samsoft
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response 144 of 264:
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Dec 10 20:48 UTC 1998 |
I guess what I meant was that an user still has access to shell but he cannot
run an executable which is residing in his home directory. He can only run
executable which are created by root.like "ls party etc etc". Which means even
if I load a fork bomb executable in my homedirectory still I cannot execute
it since it is created by me.But I could still use my normal shell and execute
programs created by root which maybe in /bin etc. So my question was is there
a way of restricting the execution of a file based on who created it.
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