It's been my observation over the last week or so that my posts to
comp.c++.moderated and comp.std.c++ are showing up immediately on my news
reader without intervening moderation, and that they appear without the
customary footer at the bottom of them.  I've also noticed the presense of
some obviously inappropriate posts in these newsgroups, also lacking the
customary footer.  Is this a known problem?

Regards,
Daniel Parker danielp@anabasis.com

    [Moderator's note:

     Yes, this is a known problem.

 Recently there has been a spate of forged control messages,
 which have been adding many bogus new newsgroups and also
 changing the status of many moderated newsgroups, including
 comp.std.c++, to unmoderated.

 Properly configured news systems use digital signature technology
 to prevent these kinds of forged control messages.  In particular,
 the freely available news server software INN has for some time
 had support for automatic cryptographic authentication of control
 messages using `pgpverify' (a front-end to PGP).  However, it
 appears that many systems are not running a recent version of INN,
 and so those systems accept the forged control messages.

 On many systems these attacks will therefore have succeeded in
 temporarily changing the moderation status of the group.
 This is almost certainly the cause of the symptoms you describe
 above.

 We have systems in place to automatically reset the moderation
 status of the group if it is changed, but there is inevitably
 some delay, during which the newsgroup suffers from the symptoms
 you describe.  Furthermore, if the attackers spam their forged
 messages with sufficient frequency, then authenticating control
 messages is the only reasonable solution.  As always, prevention
 is better than cure.

 So if you have been experiencing these symptoms, you may want
 to have a word with your system administrator about installing
 the lastest version of INN with pgpverify enabled.
 As a work-around, you can in the mean time email articles directly
 to the moderation address.

 -- moderator (fjh).]

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