[Mailman-Users] Automated Subscription Bots Inundating List Owners With Subscription Requests

[Kalbfleisch, Gary]

For the past couple days my Mailman server has been hammered with automated subscription requests.  I've always seen a few here and there but nothing like this.  Thousands of them, exploiting the web interface and replying to confirmation email messages.  Many of our lists were open subscription and so some got through.  Not a lot though.  What's most annoying is that list owners are being inundated with confirmation request messages, and you cannot delete them all at once on the "Tend to pending moderator requests" screen.  You have to select "Discard" for each of them individually.  I don't know if this has been changed yet.   I am running 2.1.9 because that is the latest version available from Redhat as a package.  I had to block access to the web interface from off site at our router to stop the deluge of messages.  I have seen this starting to occur at some other Mailman sites as well.  Anyone else seeing this or have any ideas about how best to handle this?  I have it under control for now but it is changing the way we use our lists.


-- Gary Kalbfleisch
-- Director of Technology Support Services
-- Shoreline Community College
-- (206) 546-5813
-- (206) 546-6943 Fax