Saturday, January 26, 2008

Technical Support Offered

I'd just like to offer my technical support to Justin McKeating, Tim Ireland, Sam Coates at the Times, Three Line Whip, Kevin Maguire and Tom Watson MP.

Before leaping to conclusions next time, stop, think for a minute, and then learn to read email headers. And that doesn't mean just obsessing over the "To" address and the "From" address and whatever labels are next to them. It means looking at what MTAs the mail passed through to reach its final destination. Then what you do is find out what MTA and packages the originating server might be running.

For extra credit you could perhaps read RFC 821 as well just to get a feel of how mail actually works, and then perhaps you could ask someone that knows about computers to set-up MajorDomo for you! You can start sending email with manipulated content to distribution lists too! It's quite exciting really. Just imagine the fun you could have? You could let people email an address and then change the content of their email and put a footer in it. How awesome is that?

If by this point you're feeling particularly hardcore perhaps you could open up a shell and learn to use telnet and send your own "hacked" emails to people, you won't even need a '1234' password to do it either!* I won't tell you how to do it, consider it homework. Just think what it would mean if you followed some of these tips though. First of all you'd stop making yourself look silly, but even better for some of you, you might actually get close to being the technical wizards that you like to make people think you are!

On a serious note though guys, it doesn't take a genius to look at that mail posted by Three Line Whip and realise its gone through a distribution server and had content inserted.

This post was brought to you by Dizzy Technical Support - Opening the bonnet of teh Interroadsuperwebway.

* Should you find an Open Relay when doing your homework you should do the right thing and contact the server admin and tell him he's an idiot for leaving it open to exploitation. It is what he deserves, it will probably be a Windows box.
** Here's a tip for your homework. Try pressing Alt and F4 at the same time. Go on.. try it, it;s a well guarded techie secret easter egg function in all operating systems I swear.

11 comments:

Croydonian said...

Alt + F4 is an Illuminati secret....

JuliaM said...

Ooops!!

McKeating:Update 8PM: Oh ho! An 'hilarious' 'wheeze' after all. Doesn't stop him being a fat tit and a deeply unpleasant human being, mind.

Teabag:"In the light of the fact that this story seems not to be true, I'd like to make clear that I have never sought to suggest... etc. etc."

Oh, dear, much wailing and gnashing of teeth for the poor befuddled lefties - you could almost feel srry for them.

Almost...

Bad Guido! No taunting of the slower children..!

Pete Chown said...

RFC 821 is superseded, you want RFC 2821. (Having said that, email hasn't changed much, so RFC 821 would still be a pretty good guide.)

Tim Worstall said...

Slower Child here. Alt F4? Does bugger all on my box. What's it supposed to do?

Justin said...

How you ever lost your virginity Dizzy is a mystery for the ages.

tory boys never grow up said...

So you're saying that anyone who is invited can access and use the CCHQ servers and their mailing list - or do they have to be given permission/passcodes in the first place. If the former the I must have a word with some friendly anoraks - I'm sure we could have a lot of fun.

But seriously if you want to see evidence of GuF's links with CCHQ just go and look at what he said would be in Cameron's "ad-lib" confernece speech before it happened. And he seems to get invited to all the Tory events. Whether he belongs to the official or unofficial CCHQ dirty tricks department is neither here or there.

Little Black Sambo said...

Alt + F4: well, that was quick.

James Higham said...

I'm sure all of this means something to someone somewhere.

dizzy said...

How you ever lost your virginity Dizzy is a mystery for the ages.

Prostitution

Daily Referendum said...

TBNGU,

It wasn't ad-lib, it was a speech given without reading a speech on notes. It showed dedication and hard work to learn it by heart. By the way I post the content of many labour MP's speeches before they are given. Does that make me a Labour stooge, or someone who reads the BBC News website? You will find that most speeches are released to the press before they are actually given.

Guido Fawkes said...

Particularly proud of getting the scoop on the Cameron conference speech. Much to the jealousy of many lobby hacks.

Saying that makes me part of Team Cameron makes as much sense as saying that Woodward and Bernstein were Nixon supporters.