Steering Agenda Item was Re: [Imc-tech] Re: [Imc-web] bandwidth hijacked

[Mike Lehman]

This should be an agenda item for Thursday's Steering meeting. I would 
propose a blanket authorization be added to our existing policy for any 
uploading of porn files to ban the IPs of those responsible, at the 
discretion of the webmaster.

I don't think we need a definition for porn uplodaded to the media files 
area -- you know it when you see it and its lack of association with any 
news story there it obvious what the intent is.

I would also support any measures Zach wants to take in the meantime 
under the emergency clause in current web policy. We should be notified 
when this occurs, unless it gets to be like some of the other problems 
we deal with on a recurring basis so that we just deal with them without 
notice -- so predictable, mundane, and obvious that we don't want to see 
constant, daily notifications of such situations.

BTW, I am wondering if the banning of that IP ended up causing the 
temporary slackening of the constant barrage of spam advertising posted 
as comments to old articles in the database that I've been purging? 
Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not... But I would support an accompanying use 
of IP logging to see if we can deal with that.
Mike Lehman

Zachary C. Miller wrote:

> More on this...I would like to have banned the IP of the person who
> uploaded the porn files in the first place but we didn't have IP
> logging on at the time (I actually thought I did but I had it
> misconfigured).
> 
> IP logging is now on. I am hoping that this person will upload some
> more and we'll catch them in the act.
> 
> I have found that I can not possibly ban all the IPs of everyone who
> is attempting to download this porn as they just keep coming. They are
> all coming from a link on a particular norwegian porn blog.
> 
> These folks aren't sucking our bandwidth anymore because I've removed
> the offending files but if new such files are uploaded we'll have to
> deal with it. One of the files was "wmv" format and we do have
> legitimate indymedia pieces uploaded in that format so I can't just
> ban the format.
> 
> 
>>I removed the offending files from the usermedia directory (but not
>>their database entries).
>>
>>I also disabled the serving of "asf" files. This is a legitimate video
>>format but no one has ever uploaded one to our server except one of
>>these two porn files.
>>
>>I have banned the IPs of the hosts which were hammering us.