From: Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com>
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 1996 06:22:07 +0800
To: llurch@networking.stanford.edu (Rich Graves)
Subject: Re: Novel use of Usenet and remailers to mailbomb from luzskru@cpcnet.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.ULT.3.91.960112115942.10905O-100000@Networking.Stanford.EDU>
Message-ID: <199601122105.NAA00876@slack.lne.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Rich Graves writes:
> 
> On Fri, 12 Jan 1996, Alan Bostick wrote:
> 
> > Somebody, too clever for their own good by half, has come up with a
> > novel way of using Usenet and anonymous remailers to perpetrate
> > mailbombs.  The M.O. is to post a message to the naked-lady newsgroups
> > saying "get pics in your mailbox! send this message to this address!),
> > giving the email address of a cypherpunk-style anonymous remailer and
> > including a pgp-encrypted message block.
> 
> Yuck.
> 
> Unless someone comes forward to say that they were the target of this 
> attack, I'd guess that the target is the remailer network itself.


The target, Homer Wilson Smith, is one of the people embroiled in
the Scientology wars.  I don't want to get into the recent history
of repression and abuse by Scientology agents & sympathizers, but
my guess is that this is an attempt to harass someone that
Scientology doesn't like.

They (Scientology) have shown a remarkable ability to grasp both the
technical details and social implications of the Internet and use them
to harass ex "church" members and people who say things that they
don't like.  The "church" undoubtably hates remailers because so many
of their critics post anonymously through them.  But as they discovered
with Usenet news, the same technology can be used to harass those
critics.

I think we'll see more ingenous attacks like this, using CP-tech in
perverted ways to harass people.  Annoying for sure, but helpful in
a way- they'll help debug the technology.  Like cipherpunks hacking
Netscape, in the end it just makes it stronger.



-- 
Eric Murray  ericm@lne.com  ericm@motorcycle.com  http://www.lne.com/ericm
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