On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:47:09 -0800 in Eric Hunt wrote:
Joanna,

It's not the adult sexual images they are concerned about. It's the child
pornography. And outside of images, it's all of the pirated software groups
(warez groups in the vernacular) that are also a huge liability.

What I don't get is that anyone can post any image they want in any
unmoderated newsgroup - so people could take over an unused or obscure group
and exchange warez or kiddie porn in that group and not use the alt.*
groups.

Most news server software includes filters to drop binaries sent to
non-binaries newsgroups (I used cleanfeed back when I ran some
newsservers for IBM). This issue cropped up and was filtered
shortly after the green card SPAM to USENET.

That could be circumvented by *******izing the header for the binary
and tweaking the decoder software.
Or the use of a new binary to 7bit ascii encoding software could
be used (I suspect yenc went through just fine for a few weeks).

However, that requires a level of technical prowess that seems to
be lacking. An AFS admin at a previous employer was also into
kiddie porn and used disk space on the AFS servers as a staging area
for his porn. He was busted because he was causing a spike in the amount
of data backed up from his home directory each night.
So think about it, if the admin of a fileserver can't even be arsed to
setup a staging area that isn't backed up, or disperse the crap to
the point where it shows up as an insignificant blip in usage,
a less technical individual would screw up even more spectactularly...


--
Chris Dukes
elfick willg: you can't use dell to beat people, it wouldn't stand up
to the strain... much like attacking a tank with a wiffle bat