[Systems] Messages on sugar-meeting

[James Cameron]

Not much can be done; it is automatic, and outside our control.

We are using freenode.net's community services.  freenode have a news
item about the issue; http://freenode.net/news/spambot-attack

My personal response; I'm not a channel operator for #sugar or
#sugar-meeting; if I were, I'd set the channels to +r but this will
require everyone to register with freenode.net before speaking.  It is
easier to ignore the spam.  Setting /umode +R will block private
spam.  Make sure GSoC students you mentor are aware of the situation.

To help you understand the history of the attack, and the very angry
and hurt people involved on both sides, here's a copy and paste from the
#linux.conf.au channel; it is spoken with sarcasm in oz style;

<aj> anyone know what all the freenode spam is actually about?
<evil_steve> yeah, apparently a 'master hacker' went into a ham radio channel to troll people, found it to apparently be an illicit den of pedophila, started trolling, got kickbanned, came back with friends, they got klined, and then when they complained to freenode staffers about it and the staffers did nothing, decided the entire network was a hotbed of illicit activity, and fired up their botnet
<aj> so if i ignore the "found it to apparently be an illicit den of pedophilia" part, that all sounds like a pretty plausible storm in a teacup
<evil_steve> yes
<benno> A bunch of Internet Garbage Humans are trying to do to Freenode what a similar bunch of Internet Garbage Humans did to James Gunn.
...
<eyeoh> aj: https://freenode.net/news/spambot-attack
<eyeoh> see this too if you really want the full run-down - follow the reddit references too. It's been going on for weeks now. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/linux-exherbo-developer-debunked/
<eyeoh> even some hn people thought it was real because it didn't look like obvious spam at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17543632
<eyeoh> unfortunately, GPG and WOT hasn't really taken off.
<eyeoh> irc users getting pm spam might also want to /umode +R or /mode <username> +R

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.netrek.org/