From earthscibbs@home.com Mon Jun 18 14:39:29 2001 Path: usenet.inwind.it!teaser.fr!oleane.net!oleane!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newshub2.home.com!news.home.com!news1.rdc2.on.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3B2D1CE1.35D7349@home.com> From: David Ramalho Organization: *** EarthSci BBS *** X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en,pdf MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.privacy.anon-server,alt.privacy,news.admin.net-abuse.email Subject: Re: [Announce/urgent] Chicago remailer forced closing References: <3b267972.219101492@news.bs.webusenet.com> <3B2B792D.9CE3CEB@home.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 157 Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 21:11:39 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.102.147.248 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news1.rdc2.on.home.com 992812299 24.102.147.248 (Sun, 17 Jun 2001 14:11:39 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 14:11:39 PDT Xref: usenet.inwind.it alt.privacy.anon-server:13036 alt.privacy:5674 news.admin.net-abuse.email:73658 X-IMAPbase: 1230225485 2 Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1 Nomen Nescio wrote: > > In <3B2B792D.9CE3CEB@home.com> David Ramalho earthscibbs@home.com wrote: > > Cross posted into news.admin.net-abuse.email > [...] > > Another Hipcrime causality. Techmonkeys was one of the remailers' > > that the Hipcrime group was using to flood nana-e and nana-u. > > > > Unfortunately, Techmonkeys could not or would not move quickly to > > stop the flooding. > > > > Regards > > David Ramalho > > What is Hipcrime ? > Why Hipcrime would flood nana-e and nana-u ? > What are nana-e and nana-u groups ? > > What were REAL reasons that Techmonkeys has been shut - down ? > Please include explicitly details / names, we may help to straight them up. Good afternoon nana-e is short for news.admin.net-abuse.email although properly it should have been written: nan-ae. nana-u is short for news.admin.net-abuse.usenet although properly it should have been written: nan-au. Hipcrime starting in August of 1996 as an e-mail marketing operation. What made this spamming operation unique was two things. 1. The usage of a Java Bot ( ActiveAgent ) that searched webpages looking for mailto buttons to push. This could be done either on automatic or manual. 2. The creation of the Hipcrime identity. The first usage of a fake identity to push a product on the Internet. Such identities have been used in mail, radio and television campaigns. The spam that was sent, advertised the hipcrime website and a sponsor. Those who objected to the spam were told that since they had a mailto in the website, it was ok to send the spam. Besides, the sponsor had a great product. Long distance telephone calls for 9.9 cents a minute. Oh yea, Hipcrime was a artist and anarchist so don't bother to complain. The hipcrime website was hosted in by Geoff White the owner of www.v-site.net Spam was also sent from his mail servers. But most of the spam was sent from various anonymous re-mailer servers. It appears that each ActiveAgent Bot sent the spam to a selected anonymous re-mailer server. The Hipcrime spamming operation reached its' peak in the second week of September of 1996. On September 11-12 1996 the operators of the anonymous e-mail remailers instituted blocking procedures against the ActiveAgent Bot. These procedures were completely successful. As a result between Sept. 12 - 15 a remarkable exchange of messages took place in the cypherpunks mail list. On one side were the Hipcrime operators and on the other was just about everyone else. I am convinced that the reason the Hipcrime marketing group was using the anonymous re-mailer servers was due to v-site.net not being able to handle the flow of spam messages being sent by the Bots. Since the sponsor was a legitimate company, they need extra mail servers that were legally accessible. When using the anonymous re-mailer servers at NO time did the Hipcrime marketing group attempt to hide either the sponsor or the Hipcrime sites. After the closing of the anonymous re-mailers the Hipcrime Marketing Group went into decline. The volume of advertising messages dropped dramatically. The Hipcrime message was changed. It now informed website owners not to put their e-mail addresses into the website because it was a security hazard. Between Sept 12 to late November 1996 the Hipcrime Marketing Group attempted to clean up the Hipcrime image by using this new e-mail form. At the end of November 1996 they were back spamming for the same sponsor. By the summer of 1997 it was very much over for the Hipcrime Marketing Group. The sponsor was under going the start of a major shake-up, which would result in most executives being axed within a year. Proper accounting procedures were also being put into place. The party was over. The Hipcrime marketing group was split into two section. 1. San Francisco, CA. operated by Geoff White. Provided the website and some of the e-mail facilities. 2. Boulder, CO. operated by P.P. and one other person. They controlled the Bots on a daily basis and directly dealt with issues. This would have been the end of the Hipcrime story except for one remarkable event. One of the participants in the cypherpunks mail list decided to support Hipcrime. The fellow has a reputation for being a kook. So the group that formed around him became known as the "Kook Cabal". Please note, I wrote that the "Kook Cabal" formed around the kook; NOT Hipcrime. Each supporter of Hipcrime has their own vision of just what Hipcrime is suppose to be. In most respects this was just like looking into a mirror. It took almost no effort by the Hipcrime marketing group to assist "Kook Cabal" and other Hipcrime supporters. Basically the Hipcrime supporters were self-sufficient in thought and deed. As for the Hipcrime marketing group, this was great fun. They could strike back with no effort. All in all, sort of like playing Dungeons and Dragons. In Conclusion: Let me make this clear. Hipcrime is an image created for the purpose of using e-mail as the marketing media. This was a failure. Because of the "kooks", the Hipcrime image took on new life. In reality there is no Hipcrime. Just a marketing image of an artist, an anarchist, a crazy programmer who just happened to know of a good long distance telephone deal. Regards David Ramalho ============= Taken from an argument in the cypherpunks list. Dated: 12 Sep 1996 Why not put your money where your mouth is, and bet me (any amount), that spam WILL be socially acceptable by the year 2000. Reference: http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.96.09.12-96.09.18/msg00114.html ============== From: Geoff White Subject: ANNOUNCE: Virtual Sites Inc. http://www.v-site.net Date: 26 Apr 1995 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <3nl4im$2d5@news.internex.net> content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 organization: InterNex Information Services, Inc. x-url: news:ba.internet/7919-8018#3ni705$bep@miwok.nbn.com mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: ba.internet x-mailer: Mozilla 1.1b3 (X11; I; SunOS 4.1.4 sun4) And Now... From some of the people who brought you InterNex :) Virtual Sites Incorporated. < snip > We are specifically interested in working with advertising, PR firms and entertainment oriented companies. If you would like to know more drop me a line at geoffw@v-site.net ============= From andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk Mon Jun 18 14:38:56 2001 Path: usenet.inwind.it!excite.it!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!news.tele.dk!195.224.25.10!sn-uk-xit-01!supernews.com!erlenstar.demon.co.uk!newsmonster From: Andrew Gierth Newsgroups: alt.privacy.anon-server,alt.privacy,news.admin.net-abuse.email Subject: Re: [Announce/urgent] Chicago remailer forced closing Date: 17 Jun 2001 23:28:58 +0100 Organization: disorganised Lines: 84 Message-ID: <874rte4u6t.fsf@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> References: <3b267972.219101492@news.bs.webusenet.com> <3B2B792D.9CE3CEB@home.com> <3B2D1CE1.35D7349@home.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: erlenstar.demon.co.uk (4d7f:06cb) X-Mayan-Date: Long count = 12.19.8.5.13; tzolkin = 9 Ben; haab = 11 Zotz X-Pgp-0x0E9FFBE9: 87 25 7F 14 41 24 B3 51 E0 19 8B DE 49 74 0C 29 X-Attribution: AG X-P-Persistent-Headers: are a bad idea. X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.2 X-Complaints-To: andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk X-Post-Filter: postfilter v0.6 alpha Xref: usenet.inwind.it alt.privacy.anon-server:13044 alt.privacy:5679 news.admin.net-abuse.email:73699 Status: O X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 2 >>>>> "David" == David Ramalho writes: [all fairly accurate up to this point:] David> The Hipcrime marketing group was split into two section. David> 1. San Francisco, CA. operated by Geoff White. Provided the David> website and some of the e-mail facilities. David> 2. Boulder, CO. operated by P.P. and one other person. They David> controlled the Bots on a daily basis and directly dealt with David> issues. You're not counting the individual (Robert) who actually wrote the code and posted over the "Hipcrime" signature. Somewhere along the line he moved from San Francisco to India. David> This would have been the end of the Hipcrime story except for David> one remarkable event. One of the participants in the David> cypherpunks mail list decided to support Hipcrime. The fellow David> has a reputation for being a kook. So the group that formed David> around him became known as the "Kook Cabal". David> Please note, I wrote that the "Kook Cabal" formed around the David> kook; NOT Hipcrime. Note especially that the "Freedom Knights" mailing list was already in existence at that time, and prominent Usenet Kooks such as John Grubor, Steve Boursy, Dimitri Vulis, Dave Hayes, iMplant, Ricardo Gonzales, and various other less prominent individuals were already an identifiable group (I don't know offhand when the term "kook cabal" became popular). Vulis had already released his "content-blind cancelbot" code, and various of the kook hangers-on already had histories of net-abuse of one form or another (rogue cancels, binary flooding, etc.). The prominent kooks may really have believed that what they were doing was somehow necessary to "save" free speech on Usenet from the evil Usenet Cabal (which didn't really exist at the time), but the various hangers-on mainly used this as an excuse for a bit of net.vandalism. Hipcrime fitted in with this group very well; spouting "free speech" while engaging in mass flooding and cancelling. I doubt very much that Hipcrime's previous supporters in the email game were particularly involved in this. Later on, the kook cabal essentially broke up. Most of its original members have dropped off Usenet completely or reformed; however, Hipcrime has kept up the "abuse Usenet in order to save it" line, probably to attract other net.vandals as supporters (e.g. the "Whiterabbit" individual, who is apparently responsible for the porting of NewsAgent to non-Windows platforms). Naturally, because free speech on Usenet isn't his real agenda, he's ignored all attempts to explain the consequences of his actions (e.g. that methods of controlling spam have mostly shifted from publicly-visible third-party cancellation to invisible and unaccountable filtering done by individual sites). Somewhere along the line Hipcrime has picked up a certain amount of support from some of the major Usenet spammers (who naturally are keen to support anything that interferes with efforts to prevent their activities). For some time the main distribution site for NewsAgent was hosted by the Gartman/Stemple spam operation (best known for their spamming of "rape videos" ads to alt.sexual.abuse.recovery). David> In Conclusion: David> Let me make this clear. Hipcrime is an image created for the David> purpose of using e-mail as the marketing media. This was a David> failure. David> Because of the "kooks", the Hipcrime image took on new life. I suspect that Robert would have continued using the "Hipcrime" name, and found some sort of abuse to do, even if he hadn't fallen in with the kook cabal. David> In reality there is no Hipcrime. Just a marketing image of an David> artist, an anarchist, a crazy programmer who just happened to David> know of a good long distance telephone deal. Well, the programmer certainly exists, and there is certainly one specific individual behind a lot of the work. -- Andrew.