HELP !!! My account is locked

[wingtsun]

Hi Fibsters,

need help.

Today, i try to lock in on FIbs  and get this message :

FIBS logins are disabled from your ISP for a couple of days because someone there has been sending me viruses. Please scan your machine. Send me email if you had a virus and cleaned it, and I will unblock the ISP.

I scan my system every 2 days, theres no virus in !

Did someone now, whats to do ??

wingtsun

[burper]

Here is the motd today:

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                                      
| If you're a Windows user, please scan your system for viruses.    
|                                                                    
| My fibs.com email address is getting a triple-digit number of      
| viruses sent to it every day.  I've been able to trace some of    
| them to specific FIBSsters, and have gotten them to clean their    
| machines, but I can't identify the sender of most of them.        
|                                                                    
| If a specific address continues to send me lots of viruses, I'll  
| ban it from FIBS to get the sender's attention until the machine  
| is cleaned.                                                        
|                                                                    
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

Your ISP is t-dialin.net, which sounds like a lot of fibsters may use it? It does
seem familiar. I don't think there is much you can do at this point until all
t-dialin.net users clean up their machines or Patti calms down a bit.
You are completely at her mercy on this one.

[klic]

Well, it's true, Patti blocked t-online accounts... Great. So everybody coming from t-online won't be able to connect. If she starts to block a few large ISPs more than FIBS will be rather quiet... IMHO, this is rather the wrong approach, as you get a different dynamic IP every connect or at least every 24hrs (as I do).

[burper]

Absolutely it is the wrong approach. It is clearly abuse of her FIBS admin position to "get their attention". You get the idea that she assumes it is a FIBster (perhaps she has evidence it is somehow).

But hey, nothing you can do. marvin won't care.

[alef]

Does using ParlorPlay get around this?

[klic]

Probably it would (I could start a Dos here But then it's really the wrong approach...

:angry:

should cool down a bit, was a hard day...

[wingtsun]

:angry: No way to lock in..

I try it with parlorbot.it dont work.

[wingtsun]

mean ParlorPlay

[burper]

what did it do? Has she taken all previous users of t-dialin and banned them via monitor no matter where they login from? Wow, she must be really pissed off.

[klic]

Just tried it with parlorplay, and it doesn't work, as wingtsun already observed. But I guess it's just because using parlorplay you get an applet running on *your* computer and thus using your ip... So still t-online ip range and blocked...

If she blocked logins, it would be way worse and probably even faulty logic. I just can't send a virus e-mail (not with the wide spread and know viruses) because I'm on Linux. There are no viruses in the wild. And I keep a keen eye on my firewall (have to, the machine's online 24hrs. I want to be sure it stays mine . But I know those virus mails too (heck, with my usenet appearance and mailing lists activities I get around 400 spams and virus mails a day... [administering a hand full of machines]). Boy, I didn't know in how many address books I am in... really interesting...

[burper]

I don't think parlorplay is using a java applet running on your machine, I think it is using DHTML/javascript whatever. Check how many users there are coming in from livepenguin.com, which is where parlorply logs in from. User mcgui is one of them.

[klic]

No, you're right... There's no traffic going out from my machine to fibs while using the applet. Then, it might be easier to just grep for people using the ip address they were using and blocking the accounts by name...

[hattl]

I agree with klic.
To block all users of a specific ISP, if ONE or few users of this ISP send a virus, will be the end of FIBS. I think the huge majority of flatrate users in germany are using t-online (which is blocked now)

The next ISP, will follow.

On the one hand i can understand the adminstrator that she is angry about the viruses. To spend probably a lot of time for a free service and get such an unpleasant feedback. But on the other hand is this the rigth way to avoid attacks?

1. In every community there are black sheeps. I think that is a sociolocical constant.

2. It is just impossible that ALL users have a virus free computer (statistical banality)

3. If the attack was intended and not careless, not only the wrong people are punished, but also the wrong people are awarded:
What das an attacker want? Some reasons i can imagine are:  attention, fun by inflict damage on others. The measure to block a specific ISP give both. (I am no hacker, but i think it would be hard to generate a virus, which have the same effects)

But at least i dont know nothing about the harm, the adminstrator had and for that, that FIBS is a free service i canÃ,´t complain me. I am just frustrated, that i canÃ,´t play anymore and i have to look for another backgammon platform.

Excuse my english and nice day all together

hattl

[MadMatt]

Perhaps someone could inform Patti that T-Online, being Deutsche Telekom's internet company, is one of the largest internet providers in Germany. I imagine the national telco has access to many rural areas that other providers simple don't bother to wire. Therefore, simply banning everyone from the t-online domain prevents many (most?) German FIBSters from accessing the server.

I agree that Patti's is a poor way to handle the situation. There's no proof at all that any FIBS players are at fault here, but even if there is, that's still no reason to ban half of Germany from playing on FIBS.

Meanwhile, here are some other (free) servers you might want to try if you're banned:

The Board - features a lot of backgammon variations, but unfortunately not many players

NOBS - an incomplete FIBS clone, you can play there with MonteCarlo if there's no one around, make sure to use an older (non-CLIP) FIBS client or telnet

Yahoo and MSN Zone also offer backgammon, though I personally dislike those places. They might be okay for a few games until you get your FIBS account back.

Website based where you have longer (days, weeks) to make your move:

Dailygammon
It's Your Turn

Hope to see you guys back on FIBS soon.

[alef]

If you want to discuss it with Patti I recommend posting on rec.games.backgammon. Google's archive access to the new thread is here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&...ames.backgammon

She's previously blocked entire ISPs to deal with individual bans, it's not new.

[klic]

Well, I already mailed her a statement. And I'm pretty sure it's not blocked as I don't mail via t-online but on some other mail server I control and that is not affiliated with any of t-online's ip range.
I'm left with Dailygammon, as I don't have windows and most other servers require windows software to run (that's why I also find it utterly ridiculous to block me of sending windows virii. There's just no way for me to do so...).
<rant>
I start to regret sending a donation to the fibs server when I see that I'm just so banned by the flick of a hand (well, ok, it did probably involve some more action than just a click, but anyway). I also payed for using JavaFIBS, as I know very well how hard it is for a person to do it on her on time... In fact, all my involvement in FIBs right now just gives me a bad taste in my mouth...
</rant>

Klaus

[wingtsun]

 Good News today

My Account is unlocked  

Makes me very happy, cause i miss playing ,against one of your crazy fibsters yesterday.  

Thx a lot for your posts

wingtsun    

[klic]

Well, it's probably unlocked because Patti put a 48hr temporary ban on t-online. Guess we can wait till she's going to reestablish this. At least I don't expect the number of infected machines to go down by this. And reinfecting is also a possibility. Bagle's on version Z since today...

Klaus