To Usenet/Newsreader users:

We've had to temporarily close the gateway to HP3000-L, as the server being
used to transfer the messages was utilized twice last night for illegal spam
relay purposes.

We are working today to bring NETMAIL back up (we have a new disk drive for
the 927), so that we can reopen services on the NNTP/SMTP Gateway as a
SECURED SERVER.  As much as we want to provide gateway services, we cannot
expose our servers for such malicious attack.

We caught the relay attempts, but not before quite a few messages were sent,
using our domain in the FROM headers.  We have contacted the ISPs and asked
them to turn over accountholder information.  We have also turned this over
to CERT, as well as law-enforcement authorities.  Yes, we plan to prosecute
this both criminally (theft of services) and through a civil court.

We will have the gateway up as soon as possible.  We are sorry for this -
just as we had things running smoothly, this incident had to occur.
Unfortunately, MS Exchange has very little in terms of Relay Prevention
compared to NETMAIL, which can cut it off at the source.

A note will be mailed to HP3000-L and Usenet users as soon as the gateway is
open again.

Joe