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Forged e-mails from Linus 117

Posted by Hemos from the next-it'll-be-porn dept.
davec wrote to us with the text of an e-mail from Linus [click below]. The point of the message is that someone is/was spamming in Linus' name, having him endorse the Java client for Seti@Home, you've got a fake e-mail.

"Here's a copy of an e-mail from Linus.

X-Authentication-Warning: penguin.transmeta.com: torvalds owned process doing -bs
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 00:31:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
To: Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu>
Subject: Fake emails from "Linus"
X-Loop: majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
X-Orcpt: rfc822;linux-kernel-outgoing-dig
X-UIDL: e42dadffdd3e89d559b44840e4ccea2a

Just a heads-up: somebody is sending out fake emails that claim to be from me, and that have me endorsing the Java client for Seti@Home.

The reason I know somebody is faking emails is that I got a bounce from one of them.

If somebody on the kernel list gets a message that claims to be from "Linus Torvalds " with a subject line of "Seti@Home user interface", it is fake.

I'd like to see the full headers from such a message, to see if it shows where it is really originating from: the bounced message does not contain the original headers..

I assume it is a mass-posting trying to market Seti@Home or the particular client in question, and I'm not all that amused.

Linus

PS. Although I have to admit that the first line brought a grin: "Being the awesome Linux stud that I am.." "
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Forged e-mails from Linus More

Forged e-mails from Linus

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  • Re:ooga... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Whoa cowboy, Who says Linus is creating proprietary software? He works for Transmeta, and the only statement anyone has been able to get out of them is they do "cool stuff". There is speculation they're creating a new processor because of their patent application, but that is ALL that is known. For all we know Linus is just leading a dev team to port Linux to this chipset. Damn people, show a little tolerance and kindness to your fellow man (in other words don't jump to conclusions).

  • Re:Fucking Seti@Home (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I would like to point out that the fake mail was an endorsement of the Java seti@homeclient which is just a front end (one of many such homemade front ends)for the actual client distributed by the SETI folks.. I don't think it's fair to blame them.. that is, unless you're blaming them for bringing SETI to the masses.. that's about as far as their involvement goes in all of this. *two cents go plink*

  • Sources? (Score:1)

    by Caleb ( 319 )
    Just for the record, would you be so kind as to provide sources for your claims that (a) Linus hopes to get rich off of proprietary software, and (b) Stallman hates Linus? I just hate jumping to conclusions about a man's character based solely on the word of Anonymous Coward. Thanks in advance,

    -jcc

  • Really, I think Linus has defended himself fairly well already. Just ask yourself:

    What did those people hope you would think about them by having 'Linus' endorse their product?

    Now that Linus has exposed the sham, what do you think of them?

  • show the US Government that better encryption is needed.

    Deep Crack already demonstrated that very nicely. Add to that the paper on RC6 (today's /.) and there's little point in actually crunching a test key. If the cracking teams really want government attention, they should go to work on an encrypted bank transaction. That would force the government to admit it's true opinion on the security of current key sizes.

  • You're probably right in that it wouldn't be a wise thing to sue, in this case, but Linus -has- taken legal action before, such as when some lunatic over in Boston, USA, patented Linux, I believe, and then tried demainding money from Linus, Red Hat, etc.
  • Actually is was a trademark. A number of people got involved, attempting to have the trademark revoked. The final result was a reassignment to Linus.

    Hal Duston
    hald@sound.net
  • I am not saying that math is all useless just extremely difficult to understand

    difficult for you...

    people in areas of pure math (where most of cs started) do not really think about how to apply this knowledge to anything really useful to most.

    You really don't know what your talking about here. Just because *you* can't figure out math doesn't mean that it's useless. I think because... you can't figure out math you think it's useless. If you knew anything about math you know that looking for a "useful" purpose for it is pointless. A useful purpose will find the math or it won't.
    There wasn't a good use for Boolean Algebra for a long time, then computers came around. I guess Boole should have waited a hundred years. Damm that smart ass!
    IMHO CS Majors could use a lot more Math and English experience.
  • That has to be one of the worst possible reasons for choosing that I can think of. If you want to do rc64 because you think that's more worthwhile, more power to you, but just because somebody (And we don't even know at this point if it was anybody directly involved with the project or not) did something really stupid is the wrong reason to do anything. The last thing we should be doing is letting the lowest common denominator make our decisions for us.
  • Maybe it's someone from Distributed.net trying to discredit Seti....
  • I don't know about SETI, but RC5 also has a monetary prize.

    But anyways, how many of you trust that you'll be told if and when your SETI@Home client discovers what might be alien life? The client could just be written to return a false negative while alarms ring at the gov'ment offices.

    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • Of course, RMS, having a Genius Award and thus not having to flip hamburgers or rake leaves is in no position to make that call. He has, however, been paid (quite handsomely) for contract work. There is no evidence that Linus is working on proprietary code so just the fact that he is getting paid to code does not mean the code will not be released under a free software license. It doesn't seem that Transmeta, presumably being a chip design company, would have a need for a lot of proprietary code.
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • Even many of the so-called anonymous remailers keep the information from clients and will and have released such information to law enforcement. They probably can't afford defending against criminal charges (founded or not) and they would probably be subjected to blackholing (that is, other ISPs refuse to route to them).
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • So humour doesn't exist in your reality ?
    That would be sad.
  • > such as when some lunatic over in Boston, USA, patented Linux, I believe, and then tried demainding money from Linus, Red Hat, etc.

    It was not a patent, it was a copyright. But the guy did attempt to enforce his copyright on the term, by sending threatening letters to all of the major distributors (but not Linus).

    Cheers
    Eric Geyer
  • You can always do the obvious thing: write the email in a text editor, sign it, and then paste it into the web form. Unfortunately, the email service may munge your messages, making the signature invalid; but this is just something you're going to have to try to find out.

    Regarding signing email, some of us almost _always_ sign emails and news postings; using Gnus under Emacs makes this very easy -- C-c C-/ C-s (or H-s, as one of my keyboard shortcuts). If anyone ever receives an unsigned email from "me," they should be suspicious...

    Kyle

    --
    Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
  • Use GnuPG, not PGP -- support free software. I use GnuPG exclusively, and since it's OpenPGP compliant, it interoperates with PGP 5 without any problems -- you can even use the same keyring files.
    --
    Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS

  • No I am not saying that math is all useless just extremely difficult to understand (how many nice glossy textbooks have you seen on hyperdementional geometery).

    Your logic seems "hyperdementional"[sic]. So ... math is not simple. What difference does it make if it can't be put in books with pretty pictures?

    And I am not saying that computers are useless (they do some rather interesting things) it is that people in areas of pure math (where most of cs started) do not really think about how to apply this knowledge to anything really useful to most.

    I see ... so ... the "mathematical elite" have been using computers for their own purposes (more digits of PI) and not doing things that the masses want (AI, as you gave as an example in an earlier post)?

    Problem is, we already know how to compute PI -- we do not know how to make a complete AI. You seem to be under the illusion that the computing resources going into, say, computing PI, could go into creating an AI instead, as if AI were as trivial a problem as PI. There are actually a LOT of the "mathematical elite" spending every waking hour of their lives on the problems with AI. Actually developing the theory necessary to make an AI requires more human talent and education (mathematical and more) than it does computing time, so you may as well compute PI while you're waiting, instead of letting the machines go to waste.

    It wasn't until the math requirement went down that a person could really do anything in cs without a Phd.

    Problems don't get magically less complex just because less skilled people are thrown at them. But nooo... math is hard ... the people who know it should just get out of the way and let the rest of us try to implement an AI using bogo-sort, right?

    There's a box in front of you right now, my friend. Nobody's denying you access to it. Go ahead, get all your like-minded friends together and make an AI. Write an RC5-like system to run it. Thanks to RMS, you have free (libre+gratis) tools availible to you. Go on, already! Where's that AI?


    ---

  • Re:Fucking Seti@Home (Score:3)

    by Psiren ( 6145 ) on Monday July 19, 1999 @04:25AM (#1796137)
    You shouldn't bad mouth a project just because you don't agree with it. I happen to think RC5 is a waste of time, but I don't have a go at the poeple running the clients. It's their choice, the same as it's mine to run the SETI client.

    SETI is big news at the moment. I would surmise that this is the reason this particular project is getting so much bad attention. It has a lot of good things going on too though.
  • Why do such obvious "Make Money Fast" schemes spread so quickly? Why do people get sucked in by Urban Legonds like the Good Times virus? Why do viruses lime "Melissa" spread so fast?

    How does the old saying go? "There's a sucker born every minute." Well, on the Internet, it's more like every 10ms.

    You and I may have been on the Internet for years (I started reading Net News more than ten years ago), and know that 95% of everything on the Net is pure crud, but there are thousands of newbies flooding the Internet every day, and many of them are still under the illusion that, "If it's on the computer, it MUST be true!"

  • Despite the fact that I'd love to have Linus working here at VA, I'm actually rather glad that he *doesn't* work for a Linux company. As for the tired proprietary source argument -- I'd love to hear the argument that all closed source is necessarily a Bad Thing. I need a good laugh about now. Note: I make my living with Open Source, in this particular case with the Linux/IA64 port.

    --

  • Signatures (Score:5)

    by HP LoveJet ( 8592 ) on Monday July 19, 1999 @04:50AM (#1796140)
    Maybe instead of interpreting this incident as a rallying cry to the mass lynching of forgers and spammers, we should think of it as a reminder of why it's good to use digital signatures for authentication.

  • The guy wrote a clone of Unix (which I'm surprised he didn't get sued for doing) with great organization and happened to release it freely so other Unix lovers could use it also. This meant hacking your own drivers for the hardware but in time people cover those faster then you can so you just use theirs.


    Not to be pedantic, he did not get sued because Linux is a cleanroom implementation of the POSIX standard, not a recreation of any particular Unix system.


    Reverse engineering is legal if you don't have access to the source...


    BTW, your point was well taken. I don't mean to shift the topic of your argument. :-) Linus is NOT a god; however, he is someone that many of us (myself included) respect and admire for his achievements.


    Ethan

  • Wouldn't that be a pretty good opportunity for Linus and anyone of us who cares about such things to start using some Pretty Good Privacy (international edition only, please - let us see the anticrypto paranoids prove everybody is a terrorist) generated signature?

  • Secure webmail:
    http://www.hushmail.com/
    http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990526S00 02

    I do not use any of these services, but they seem to be a good place to start. Hushmail's source code is available.
  • Cracking for serial numbers?

    You mean, figuring what pattern will be used to generate a valid key? Sure, that's legal. Using it to get around licensing restrictions isn't though, and handing out a program that can do that might or might not be, depending on how provable intent is...of course, last I heard, some software companies were trying to make any reverse engineering illegal, I don't know how that's doing.

  • Geez man,

    Linus ain't some god or something... just a guy who used his brain and happened to be in the right place at the right time.

    I appreciate his efforts and linux a lot, but if Linus would die tomorrow, the show would go on.

    Faking someone's email address sure is lame. It happens. Life goes on. Big deal.
  • Contrary to popular belief in the Linux community, Linus is NOT God.

    The guy wrote a clone of Unix (which I'm surprised he didn't get sued for doing) with great organization and happened to release it freely so other Unix lovers could use it also. This meant hacking your own drivers for the hardware but in time people cover those faster then you can so you just use theirs.

    Face it people, Linus isn't a god, just a very organized and generous (for releasing it to the public) guy.

    I'm not insulting him or Linux, just bringing up a point that has bugged me a few times. :-)

    8Complex

    P.S. - This is along those lines of Windows lovers saying Bill Gates was god. :-)
  • Yeah, I respect him and love the fact that something that he did for hisself turned out to be a world hit, basically.

    "Reverse engineering is legal if you don't have access to the source..."

    I don't think that this is necessarily true... Cracking, in the sense of cracking programs for serial and registration numbers, isn't really legal, is it? Maybe it is one of those 'grey' areas...

    8Complex
  • You're confusing yourself with a bad analogy. The simple facts are: the plural of letter is letters; the plural of mail is mail, not mails. 'The mail must get through' is the same as 'the messages or letters must get through.' Your argument regarding service vs. piece of mail is shown bogus by referring to "pieces of e-mail." If the word were not already plural, you would not need to clarify your meaning this way.

    teasea's tedious 2 worth
  • And if RMS told you to jump off of a bridge would you? A few points: First, RMS is fallable. Second, do we actually know that Linus is working on proprietary software at Transmeta? Last I checked all we know about Transmeta is they are producing something that probally deals with emulation, but that might be 100% off. Third, saying Linus has turned his back on free software is just plain stupid. He hasn't sold the linux kernel to any company (not like he could even if he wanted to). He even made sure that his contract allows him time to work on Linux. Also, I remember reading something where Linus said he never wanted to be paid to work on Linux since there was a potential for a conflict of interests if his boss wants feature X, and Linus doesn't think it's a good idea.
  • Look for the picture of him in his saint iGNUtious (or whatever it was) costume, or listen to his "free hackers" song, or read www.gnu.org. The man lost touch with reality years ago.
  • I'm guessing that RMS hates Linus because Linus is more popular than RMS. I think the whole GNU/Linux thing is proof of that. RMS doesn't care about free software, he cares about his movement, and it pisses him off that someone else is managing to steal the spot light w/o doing any publicity stunts.
  • Just shows you how popular Linus has become, and how much power he has behind him now!
  • Anybody got those headers? Lets find the little bastard and give his server the Slashdot effect.

    ------------------------------------------
    Byron Ray
  • Re: Human Race 35K years old...

    I think ol' boy meant the oft quoted age of human civilization. Like, before the Tigris and Euphrates civilization. N' stuff.

  • bong (Score:4)

    by eyeball ( 17206 ) on Monday July 19, 1999 @04:23AM (#1796156) Journal
    Ok, so how many people think that Linus was stoned out of his gourd and actually sent the email?

    I can just see it now. He goes to Phantom Menace, gets all psyched up on finding aliens, goes home....
  • Human race is 35K year old? Homo sapiens? Where did you get this info?
  • exactly, and those who don't know wouldn't differentiate between him and John Smith

    washed out?? ya never to old to code :P
  • what's it mean?

  • While the project has had some flaws, excoriating it for its fringe lamer proponents is a little unfair. Where have we seen that before?
  • Lets see - 7/18 an article about JSetiTracker shows up on Slashdot - 7/19 a fake Linus spam shows up. Possible connection?

  • Linus is not in anything just for the money at all. However he *does* have responsibilities that require money (wife and children to support, pay his own bills, etc). He has in no way given the kernel sources to god ol' BG and company or sold anyone out. I think it's admirable that he has been able to get a job for himself to allow him to be able to keep developing Linux.
  • The only use that could have would be to exploit microsoft apps and related data or to garner info from cookies in some way. This has no real effect on me.
  • Question to pose. How does one use any form of authenticaion or signing like pgp from a web based email service? That leaves people like me screwed.
  • Yeah but that opens up a real problem with most people namely that you have to go through them to get any info. Who says that anyone will do anything? Is it against the law if they don't? Can they be held for similar charges in assisting with libel?
  • Slashdot has become a standard porthole to information and as such that information can be used for good/evil.
  • No I am not saying that math is all useless just extremely difficult to understand (how many nice glossy textbooks have you seen on hyperdementional geometery). And I am not saying that computers are useless (they do some rather interesting things) it is that people in areas of pure math (where most of cs started) do not really think about how to apply this knowledge to anything really useful to most. That really bites. It wasn't until the math requirement went down that a person could really do anything in cs without a Phd.
  • Please explain how he is insane? I think he is just a person who has political views that are good for a person who is in debate circles (Lincoln-Dogulas). As I was instructed in debate you are to never, never, never, agree to anything that the opponent says even if they say that objects fall down due to the force of gravity otherwise they will pick you apart completely.
  • Basically I think that everything that is currently done with distributed computing is a waste of time in one way or another due to the lack of a way to generically impliment distributed computing solutions for something interesting like perhaps an ai system, the human genome project, etc. Basically most of computer science was (and still is) linked to the a verry large ammount of mathmetical knowledge at it's core. How many math problems are considered pointless? Most of them. How many of these projects are pointless due to the same methods? Most. Not to say that cracking cyphers and finding out about intelligent life are not interesting but most of the time I think that people can do better. The future of space travel to the level that Star Trek has would be most likely in the 10,987th century and not the 24th at the rate that we progress. I really don't think that the Vulcans will contact us.
  • Why do viruses lime "Melissa" spread so fast?
    I'll assume you ment 'like'
    Melissa requires no human intervention. if you have anyone in your outlook address book, they'll get it sent to them when you get it. all they have to do is open the .doc file. At that time, they was considerd safe...
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • at times like this, its helpfull to remember that, while a brilliant coder, and a great leader, RMS is completly insain
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • cut 'n' paste
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • he future of space travel to the level that Star Trek has would be most likely in the 10,987th century and not the 24th at the rate that we progress

    what?
    what frame of refrence do you have for guaging technological advancement over 10,987,000 years? the human race itself is only about 35,000 years old. all of recorded history is only a few thousand. 300 years ago there was no industrial capability *at all* 80 years ago, there was no computer tehcnology *at all* 35 years ago there were no microprocesors.

    Basically most of computer science was (and still is) linked to the a verry large ammount of mathmetical knowledge at it's core. How many math problems are considered pointless? Most of them.

    this makes even less sense. Are you saying computers are useless? most of the math i've ever seen has been pretty usefull. have you ever taken calculis, or physics? the stuff you can do when you know that stuff is simply amazing.
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • I know that it's a long shot, but if it's the only shot you have, it doesn't cost anything to try..

    Yeah but that opens up a real problem with most people namely that you have to go through them to get any info.

    Yes, but if you don't have the headers, it's better than nothing..

    Who says that anyone will do anything?

    There's no guarantee that anyone will do anything, but if you don't ask, you're guaranteed that they they won't... (it's like the lottery - you can't win if you don't buy a ticket :o)

    Most ISP's are anti-spam, so it stands to reason that they might be inclined to help..
  • It is possible to trace an email back to the originating server,
    assuming that you have the co-operation of the sysadmins of the relay
    at the other end; he knows from where the bounce originated, and
    (probably) has the message ID (but if not, he has the 'source' email
    address :o) .. ask the sysadmin for that server (hopefully s/he's a
    Linux user :o) to parse his/her sendmail logs and find out where it
    came from.

  • i can see zdnet picking this one up.
    the headline could read:
    Stoned Linux inventer, invites followers to help look for aliens...

    nmarshall
    #include "standard_disclaimer.h"
    R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
  • There's been such a large clash over which client is best to "give" my spare cycles to. Whoever did this, be it a SETI developer, or just a stupid kid, is simply discrediting SETI, and making a fool of him/herself.
    This is the final decider for me.

    Distributed.net all the way baby!

    ----------------------------------(
  • There are more Projects out there, where you can spend your spare CPU-Cycles. The Search for big prime numbers, the gazillionth digit of PI, some obscure Optimum Gollomb Ranger (don't know, what this is about...) and more.
    I even heard of distributed computing for movies! Just think: You're in cinema watching "Toy Story 2" and every 5 minutes or so someone shouts: "Hey, that picture was rendered by my home-PC!" =:-)

    CU, Ventilator
  • With Disney or Bill Gates to give away thousands of dollars and a trip to Disney world... in HONG KONG!? cooooool......
    Sounds like seti@linus is about to become another e-mail legend.
  • Might this forged spam indicate that someone has found a security exploit in the Java client???
    Bad people usually do bad things for a reason.
    Just thinking out loud... I'm not a Java programmer.
  • Miow...
  • NOOO !!! How could the evil ones blaspheme so upon our Holinous of The Kernel... I can only pray that such an event never happens again.

    Is nothing sacred ?
  • Yes, but SETI searches infinite radio waves for messages... therefore, SETI has little chance of succeeding unless there's an alien civilization trying to contact us. If there is... it's only a matter of time. If there isn't... then your computer is churning away at empty space. The draw of RC5 is that we know it can be cracked and we want to show the US Government that better encryption is needed.

  • Congrats to Linus; I once tried to be a Unix stud but got caught in a conundrum.
  • As I have already mentioned under the original JSetiTracker topic, the author of that program is operating a web server in direct violation of his service agreement with @Home. Personally, this does not seem to me to indicate very high standards of ethics on his part.

    That doesn't necessarily mean that his program is a trojan horse nor that he was the source of the faked email. It does seem to me to raise some legitimate suspicion.
  • And if I happen to crack that one special RC5 block then I've got a few grand to buy some new hardware. Besides, distributed.net's numbers are bigger. :)
  • Heh heh. Something that would be really funny:

    They find the guy, and find out he sent the email from an M$ Exchange server. Ha ha ha!

    That's as funny as http://homepages.msn.com using Apache,

    -
    Christopher Richard
  • There seems to be some demand for Linus to become a pitchman or spokesperson for some products. Maybe he could get an infomercial or go on the Shopping Channel and start selling stuff.

    "Sick of the Colonel's Secret Recipe? Do you Big Macs make you feel crashed and bloated?" Try Kernel Linus' Chicken Wings. Our recipe is open sourced, and is constantly tuned and adjusted by legions of cooks and butcher's.

    Linus' Chicken could even have several distributions going for it... each with their own angle. Some aimed for the business crowd, some aimed at student hipsters.
  • Of course, this is a can of worms, but I really think that the SETI@Home project is almost infinitely more worthy than RC5 cracking. Consider the potential outcomes of each project:
    SETI: we discover an alien civilisation
    RC5: we discover that, given enough computer power, a particular encrypted message is crackable.
    The thing is : we already know that RC5-encoded messages are crackable, if enough CPU is thrown at it. Sure, the distributed.net project is a mildly interesting demonstration of massive parallelism over the Net, but so is SETI@Home, and is has a far more interesting goal, and the potential outcomes are almost incalculably earthshaking.
  • I agree; but reading that reminded me of the scene is "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" when a spectator at the archery contest says, "Let's give 'im the chop!"

    Unfortunately !) my email sits comfortably behind a university firewall, so no spam for me so far.

  • Eeek. I thought the Slashdot Effect was just a focus of hits from all over the world, not one person, and not any abnormal (ping of death?) activity. If it's more than just multiple hits and individual e-mails (though from many individuals), please let me know and ignore my previous agreement.

  • It would increase my respect. Identity theft, fraud, defense of one's rights and honor are just the kind of things to "get all governmental about". If the gov't doesn't exist to protect individuals then what good is it?

    I often wonder how many (if any) violations of individual rights perpetrated by Microsoft are ignored by focusing on the bogus anti-trust laws.

  • Re:Sue me, litigate! (Score:3)

    by whm ( 67844 ) on Monday July 19, 1999 @04:34AM (#1796196)
    Linus should sue! Seriously. He's probably the only person in the Linux world who can more or less demand 100% respect

    Hrm...Linus suing would be a way for him to lose that 100% respect. Its definitely alright to be upset over this sort of thing, but its not something to get all govermental about. I think I like how Linus sticks to Linux, and not to politics.
  • Well, as to Linus promoting proprietary software, I know that I've seen it frequenty mentioned that Linus likes (or liked, it was awhile back) Powerpoint. I believe I've even read such a rumor in Linux Journal. Of course that isn't an out and out endorsement of anything.
  • >Linus has said at public debates (with Stallman) that he hopes to get rich off of proprietary software, and that is why he is at Transmeta. Get a clue. Why do you think Stallman hates him?

    Do you have a reference that backs up this statement?

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