The entire orbz/Battle Creek issue is both sad and predictable. It's sad that it ever came up or that Orbz had to be shut down, but predictable because it reflects a common situation: an admin who is probably in over his head and a bureaucratic situation where people need to first protect their own jobs. We see this sort of thing all the time with the consulting side of our business: the client has an admin who can do the "monkey-work" of running a server (be it file, mail, or web server), but who really doesn't understand very much. They don't want to pay to have someone do things right, and they live mostly on good luck (like driving around without a seatbelt or car insurance -- it works as long as you don't get into an accident). When things go wrong, they want to either hide or pass the blame, preferably to someone outside their organization.
There is no way that Battle Creek could legally claim the orbz probe was a DOS attack -- first, it only sends legally formed messages that work fine with any properly configured mail server (even those that are open relays). Second, the probe behavior doesn't follow the standard DOS pattern; it was just a probe, not a barrage. The only reason there was a loss of service was the Battle Creek failed to properly maintain their mailserver and/or they were using defective software. They called the orbz probe a DOS attack for one reason: they needed to blame someone else for their mistake. If you want to imagine a comparable situation, try daydreaming about this: You use the online banking service from your local bank. Naturally, this means you have to login, and one days you leave the logon screen on your monitor. So your four-year-old starts trying to login with random usernames/passwords, just playing around. After an hour or two, he finds a combination that not only logs him in, but then somehow brings down their entire website. This is obviously a bug in their software, but (by Battle Creek standards) you (or your four-year-old) have now instituted a DOS attack. Frankly, I'd blame the bank in this scenario, even though my kid is the one who entered the bad username/password. Similarly, if I lived in Battle Creek and their outage cost me a lot of money, then I'd seek restitution from the City, not orbz. I'm glad Battle Creek backed off, but I don't think this is the last time we'll see something like this. Ben BC Web ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Tolmachoff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 9:47 AM Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] "City Settles Dispute with orbz.org" http://www.internetnews.com/isp-news/article/0,,8_996341,00.html 03/22/02 9:46 PST John Tolmachoff IT Manager, Network Engineer 211 E. Imperial Hwy., Suite 106 Fullerton, CA 92835 714-578-7999, ext. 104 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.reliancesoft.com Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html to be removed from this list. An Archive of this list is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Please visit the Knowledge Base for answers to frequently asked questions: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html to be removed from this list. An Archive of this list is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Please visit the Knowledge Base for answers to frequently asked questions: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
