Golden_Eternity sets mode: +m
Golden_Eternity: OK, here we go... The channel is moderated. If you need to make a comment, or ask a question, then /notice it to me
Golden_Eternity: Hear ye, hear ye... We are gathered here today to learn about NNTP...
Golden_Eternity: As our friend Kreuger pointed out, not everyone knows what NNTP is...
Golden_Eternity: NNTP is the Network News Transfer Protocol. It is resident on port 119
Golden_Eternity: NNTP is the transfer protocol for Usenet (Internet Newsgroups), although UUCP has been used for that in the past.
RogueX: its where all the porn is
Golden_Eternity: UUCP is less efficient, though, so most people use NNTP now...
Golden_Eternity: RogueX: its where all the porn is
Golden_Eternity: ;)
Golden_Eternity: Thanks Rogue
Golden_Eternity: lol
Golden_Eternity: OK... So, now lets suppose you've been reading usenet, and you've found the one gem of a post amidst all the porn ads and multi-level marketing schemes that you actually want to respond to...
Golden_Eternity: There are a couple problems with this... the first is that of spammers.
Golden_Eternity: This is going to be pretty basic for some of you, but I want to address it anyway...
Golden_Eternity: If you post with your e-mail address, then you will be inundated with spam (Unsolicited commercial e-mail) for a few weeks at least
Golden_Eternity: The answer to this is simple... Every newsgroup reader has a place for you to put your identity. Just alter your e-mail address in this field. Adding something like "nospam" will block most spammers from finding you, while still making your address available to valid responses
Golden_Eternity: The reason this works is that spammers (People who send mass e-mail ads, etc) use bots to read through newsgroups scanning for something of the form [email protected]
Golden_Eternity: If it finds it, it tags this into a file for later use...
Golden_Eternity: One thing people have been doing of late is to add a number of valid e-mail addresses to the bottom of their posts ([email protected], [email protected], etc) so the spammers send their junk right to the people who will do something about them...
Golden_Eternity: OK, back to NNTP...
Golden_Eternity: Now, it is possible to do more than just alter your identity in posts... you can also send posts with headers you yourself designed.
Golden_Eternity: I know this, because someone once posted to alt.2600 using my identity ;)
Golden_Eternity: They announced my status as an 31337 haxor and also bragged about my homosexuality...
Golden_Eternity: When I finished laughing, I decided to find out how it was done, so here you are being babbled at by me today
Golden_Eternity: OK, the way you send a fake newsgroup post is extremely similar to sending a fake e-mail, for those of you who were here for pez's lesson on that (Or who already know how)
Golden_Eternity: The RFC on NNTP even points out its similarity to SMTP
Golden_Eternity: So, step one is to telnet to port 119 of your news-server of choice...
RogueX: uh huh.. SURE.. yeah... ill bet it was like alt.sex.beastialty or something (but I cant spell)
Golden_Eternity: *RogueX* Yeah, well... I'm trying to look professional
Golden_Eternity: Once you've gotten in, it will tell you if posting is allowed or not... then give you leave to enter commands
Golden_Eternity: The command to post a message is... "post" (NNTP is case insensitive)
Golden_Eternity: NNTP will then respond with a three digit number and a text response (Hopefully saying something to the effect of "send data now")
Golden_Eternity: For those of you who want more information on the meaning of the responses NNTP might give you, contact me afterward. I have a written lesson with information on it. Or you can track down RFC977 which is the RFC on NNTP (From February 86, BTW)
Golden_Eternity: These will also be making an appearance on my web page in the future...
Golden_Eternity: Once you have the go-ahead from the NNTP server, you enter the text of the post you are trying to send, including headers, with a space between the headers and the body.
Golden_Eternity: To mark off the end of the post, use a period on a line by itself. e.g.:
Golden_Eternity: .
Golden_Eternity: To find the proper format of the headers, I recommend grabbing a post off usenet, and using it as a template...
RogueX: just like sendmail huh?
Golden_Eternity: Watching headers on usenet is also good for another reason which I will address in just a sec
Golden_Eternity: RogueX: just like sendmail huh? -- Yes, NNTP is extremely similar to sendmail (SMTP). In fact, I have heard of people using NNTP to forward fakemail. I don't know how this is done, I'm afraid... but if I find out, I'll add that to the info on my page, or maybe have another lesson (God forbid)
Golden_Eternity: no webpage yet?
Golden_Eternity: My web page is at http://members.tripod.com/~Golden_Eternity/
Golden_Eternity: This document isn't up yet, however
Golden_Eternity: Give me a couple days
Golden_Eternity: OK, back to the headers... Here is what you need
Golden_Eternity: After you issue the post command, and it returns an OK to send the data, then you enter lines something to the effect of this... (Note: there are other optional headers, and if a header isn't something NNTP recognizes, it should pass it into the post as typed)
Golden_Eternity: From: [email protected] (Optional name here)
Golden_Eternity: This is fairly obvious... its the e-mail address you are claiming the post to have come from...
Golden_Eternity: Some people enter a name or nickname in their identity for their newsgroup reader, that would go into the parenthesis
Golden_Eternity: Newsgroups: alt.test
Golden_Eternity: alt.test is a newsgroup created for testing posts to usenet... you wouldn't believe how many posts there are to regular newsgroups that say something to the effect of "Test: Please ignore"
Golden_Eternity: Anyway... don't go posting your first try at fake news posting to alt.2600 .. send it to alt.test
Golden_Eternity: Later, if you want to post to multiple newsgroups (NGs), then separate the group names with a comma (eg. alt.test, alt.2600, alt.sex.beastiality)
Golden_Eternity: Er, ignore that last one...
Golden_Eternity: Subject: Subject of post
Golden_Eternity: That should be fairly obvious
Golden_Eternity: Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 00:29:45 +0800
Golden_Eternity: OK, this is the date as I sent it last night... There may be other formats acceptable on other news servers, but for my news server, that's how it wants it... if you are watching newsgroups, pay attention to how dates are formatted
Golden_Eternity: Message-ID:
Golden_Eternity: This is a recording number a news server tags onto a post to identify it. I don't know if it is necessary or not, but as you can see, the content doesn't much matter... you may want to make it come from the same domain as your e-mail address, though... but it doesn't much matter
Golden_Eternity: If people are going to try and determine where a post came from, this is usually considered to be one of the most reliable parts of it (in truth, the only thing you can really trust are IP numbers within the headers, and sometimes not even them)
Golden_Eternity: OK, enough babbling about stuff I don't know for certain...
Golden_Eternity: After the message-ID and any other headers you want to tag into the post, use a blank line to separate the headers from the body of the post
Golden_Eternity: Then, as I mentioned before, use a period on a separate line to mark the end of the post (ala sendmail)
Golden_Eternity: The thing to beware of with a news-server is a header called NNTP-Posting-Host
Golden_Eternity: This is tagged on by the newsserver, and it will be your IP address at the time you sent the post
Golden_Eternity: Not all news-servers do this, though, so there's a good reason to be researching news-servers before actually trying to post something to a real newsgroup
Golden_Eternity: OK, I'm about babbled out...
Golden_Eternity: I'll open the floor to questions now then...
Golden_Eternity sets mode: -m
why do I need this for porn?
Golden_Eternity: Anything you want to ask to try and make me look dumb?
Golden_Eternity: Umm... so your ISP doesn't know you're sending porn?
works for me
Golden_Eternity: Or if you don't want your friends to be able to track your conversation in alt.fan.traci-lords?
Golden_Eternity: Er, but I don't know anything about that...