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Dear User Support group
I would like to raise a question about the news posting at CERN.
As is well known, and also reported in a recent CNL issue (220), many
systems, and in particular VMS systems, both at CERN and in the world,
host the CERN newsgroups. These groups, called CERN.XXXX, play
an important role in spreading knowledge in fields strictly related to
particular interest for scientists of the physics community.
Everybody can see his messages published both by a direct posting on the
newsgroup or by sending a mail to the newsgroup moderator for a later
posting.
Direct posting gives great freedom and of course is quicker, but,
unfortunately, it also allows the posting of news that may be useless,
or even annoying, for the people comprising that particular newsgroup.
The exponential growth of the popularity of the Internet is leading to an
increasing amount of useless messages and garbage-mail spreading in all
networks. In order to avoid the presence of such messages even on the CERN
newsgroups posted from anonymous users I would strongly suggest the posting
only through the presence of a moderator for each newsgroup, responsible
for the posted news.
I would like to see this letter published on the `Letters to the
Editor' of one of the following issues of CERN Computer Newsletter.
Thanks very much for your attention, sincerely yours
Aniello Saggese
Dear Mr Saggese
Although agreeing with you that unwanted postings to professional
newsgroups are a serious inconvenience to those who follow them, there
is unfortunately no solution to it:
-
First, it is the explicit wish of some of the newsgroup owners to have
the newsgroup open, i.e., unmoderated, for easier communication.
-
Second, there is no manpower available to be able to moderate
\emph{everything} we would like to.
We restrict ourselves to moderating the crucial newsgroups
which are seen by the largest audiences.
-
Third, even if we could moderate, this is no effective barrier against
people who have a certain knowledge of current ``news'' systems;
moderation is only a deterrant against novice misuse.
Therefore, I am afraid we cannot fulfil your wishes. In this world of
widespread usage of the net, noise on newsgroups must be accepted as
part of their usage...
Best regards,
M.Marquina,CN/DCI (User Support)
Remarks from the Computer Security Officer
Having just read the above letter and reply as the CNL was going to press
I would like to make a few comments.
First, the remarks made in the above letter are of concern to us.
There has been occasional mis-use of the CERN news groups in the past
concerning, sometimes minor (Non-CERN related advertisements in
cern.market),
sometimes more worrying (pornographic material) postings.
CERN, as a professional establishment, needs to maintain an image that
is in keeping with its technical competence. As CERN Computer Security
Officer, issues concerning the mis-use of CERN resources are occasionally
notified to me.
As a result, and due to our concern in this area, CN is in the process of
promoting a policy concerning news groups that ``belong'' to CERN
(cern.*).
The basis for the policy is the following proposal:
-
If the news group is open to submissions from persons not at CERN
then it should be moderated.
-
If the news group is restricted, such that submissions can only be made
from CERN accounts, then it can be un-moderated.
-
The Charter of each CERN news group should be regularly re-issued to
remind the population of what is acceptable for that news group.
However, the technical reality of the situation is that moderating news
groups is manpower intensive, and furthermore that the protocols used to
handle moderated news postings are not secure. A determined author could
(easily) bypass the authorisation mechanism of current news services.
For non-moderated news groups, anyone who receives a news group may inject
a posting locally and this will be fed throughout the ``news network'',
eventually arriving on the CERN news system. CERN may well be the last
to see a posting in the `cern' newsgroup.
Although the CERN news groups are only fed to the HEP world they invariably
leak due to a lack of news management at other sites. Furthermore, some of
the CERN news groups accept feeds from other HEP institutes where there are
no current restrictions on postings.
In conclusion I would say that there is very little that can be done with
the existing news products. Any improvement would have to be supported
by the news managers of all the HEP sites re-distributing CERN news groups.
There is probably only cern.market that could be considered a
CERN-only news group-most of the others are fed to our colleagues at
other HEP sites.
The situation is very frustrating as there is currently no real-world solution
to the problem. It is CN's opinion that we should have a responsible policy
regarding these issues, even if todays technology means that the
implementation will be weak. Adherence to such a policy, as the news
protocols evolve will, hopefully, lead us in the right direction.
John Gamble CN/CS (CERN Computer Security Officer)
Michel Goossens
CN Division
Tel. 3363
Tue Nov 28 18:14:41 MET 1995