On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 10:41:56AM -0400, Mitch Halmu wrote:
Some black hats illustrated here:
Thanks for directing our attention to a photograph of some Men In Black Hats; the operational benefit is immense. But in the context we're talking about, the New Hacker's Dictionary[1] tells us that a "black hat" is: "[common among security specialists] A cracker, someone bent on breaking into the system you are protecting. Oppose the less common `white hat' for an ally or friendly security specialist; the term `gray hat' is in occasional use for people with cracker skills operating within the law, e.g. in doing security evaluations. All three terms derive from the dress code of formulaic Westerns, in which bad guys wore black hats and good guys white ones." The maintainers of MAPS RSS[2] and pals aren't interested in breaking into your mail server. Rather, their goal is to protect others _from_ you, as you've chosen to be irresponsible and consciously operate an open e-mail relay. The problem can be resolved by you fixing your mail server. Personally, I'd get by just fine without e-mail from a nice chunk of the folks listed on your page. -adam [1] <http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/jargon.html> [2] <http://mail-abuse.org/rss/>