From: "Deranged Mutant" <WlkngOwl@UNiX.asb.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 11:48:40 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: (Fwd) White House mail bomb protest?
Message-ID: <199603040145.UAA04626@UNiX.asb.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


In regards to the few messages about mailbombing the prez's box...

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
 |From jms@tennis.opus1.com Sun Feb 11 06:57:22 1996
 |From: jms@tennis.opus1.com (Joel M Snyder, writing fool)
 |Subject: High mail volumes at whitehouse.gov
 |Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.security.misc,news.admin.net-abuse.misc
 |Date: 9 Feb 96 16:03:20 -0700
 |Organization: Opus One, Tucson, Arizona
 |Message-ID: <1996Feb9.160320.495@tennis.opus1.com>

 Folks:

 Good day.  By way of introduction, I'm the consultant who  did the
 "anti-mailstorm/anti-mailbomb" software that runs on the MX host for
 WHITEHOUSE.GOV.  Now that the Telecom. Act of 1996 has been signed,
 the volume of mail through WHITEHOUSE.GOV has gone up significantly.
 For example, there were about 85,000 lines in the mail log file yesterday.

 Most of that is just people who want to express their opinion.  However,
 several misguided individuals have decided that they want to throw a monkey
 wrench into the works by storming the President's email.

 I'm writing this to let any system administrators out there know that you
 may find mail from your site to WHITEHOUSE.GOV is not moving very quickly.
 This is normal; it's a sign that the automatic protections of that system
 have kicked in.

 Without going into details, if too many messages come from a single site,
 the mail handler will throttle back accepting messages.  Eventually,
 though, the mail will be accepted for delivery.  If you have legitimate
 mail, it will eventually get through (many messages from the same
 correspondent will be flushed without acknowledgement).  However,
 correspondents who were used to getting a reply within seconds telling them
 that their message was accepted may see a substantial delay.

 Finally, if any users on your site have any delusions about the effect of a
 mail bomb or storm of mail, let me help you dispel them: (1) no one
 important enough to make a difference will be affected or know or care; (2)
 if the messages are nasty or threatening enough, someone equally nasty may
 come and visit; (3) what you'll succeed most in doing is ruining the
 weekends and/or days of underpaid civil servants as well as wasting federal
 tax dollars.

 Please feel free to redistribute this or use parts of it in your motd.

 Joel Snyder
 (jms@opus1.com)

 PS: I don't read these newsgroups and am spending most of the weekend
 trying to make sure that the mail system doesn't melt down anyway, so if
 there is discussion on this, I won't see it.

 --------- end forwarded mesage -------------


Rob. 

---
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