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'Spamalot' Subscribers to Get Spam ... a Lot
CrazyWingman writes "It looks like the list of e-mail addresses subscribed to the lists for the Broadway show 'Spamalot' has been nabbed by spammers. The New York Times is reporting that the list was posted on a page that could be found by looking at the source of other Spamalot webpages. All I have to say is that I hope the creators of the Spamalot website have been sacked."
Who didn't see THAT one coming?
sup
That does it. I'm going to sign up at www.freemoneyalot.com If it works like www.spamalot.com does, I'll be on the gravy train!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It's only a model.
Halitosis - (n.) Halle Berry's Camel Toe.
It's a bitch. Is this poetic or ironic justice?
Registration free link
Generated using the New York Times Link Generator.
"Spamalot" fans who signed up for a newsletter on the Broadway musical's official Web site may end up getting, well, spammed a lot. "Movin' Out" devotees may have the same problem. A security glitch - now fixed - exposed the names and postal and e-mail addresses of more than 31,000 people to savvy computer users.
Up until Thursday evening, when a reporter from The New York Times pointed out the problem to the Web sites' developer, visiting a specific address on the shows' sites produced a long page with mailing-list data. The security hole was not obvious to casual Web surfers because the address was buried in the site's code. But it could have been discovered by someone deliberately seeking the list data, or by a kind of program used by spammers to scour the Web for new e-mail addresses to bombard.
Both montypythonsspamalot.com, where 19,000 people had signed up for a newsletter, and movinoutonbroadway.com, where 14,000 had, were built by Mark Stevenson, a designer in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.
Mr. Stevenson said he had hired a programmer, whom he would not identify, to add the list sign-up function to the sites. He said that the amount of resources put into security on the sites had seemed adequate, but "in retrospect, this was not enough, and we need to do more." He said that a message would be sent to the list with a warning about fraudulent e-mail messages.
Mark Wilkie, a software engineer who maintains Web sites for Gawker Media, said the ability to view the data must have been built into the sign-up software, but it was not clear why someone would do this. "Security-wise, it's a horrible thing to do," he said.
Aaron Meier, a spokesman for Monty Python's "Spamalot," said yesterday that the show would have no comment.
When told by e-mail message about the breach, several people who had signed up for the "Spamalot" list said they were unsurprised, given the state of Internet security and the aggressiveness of spammers. Several noted that there was something appropriately Pythonesque about the incident. After all, Internet historians say that the use of the word spam to refer to junk e-mail messages has its roots in a 1970 Monty Python sketch, in which all conversation in a cafe is drowned out by a group of Vikings chanting the word over and over. The sketch and its song about Spam, the meat product, were adapted for the new musical.
"Are you sure they didn't do it on purpose?" joked one list subscriber, Matthew J. H. Baya of Ellsworth, Me. "Talk about guerrilla marketing."
The cREators would like to announce that the previous creato
NO CARRIER
The c re a tors of
NO CARRIER
Please help metamoderate.
Mr. Stevenson said he had hired a programmer, whom he would not identify, to add the list sign-up function to the sites.
But why? It's not like we'd want to bludgeon, or bitchslap, or ambush, or lynch the programmer.
The coolest voice ever.
No, relli!
She was Karving her initials on the moose with the sharpened end of an interspace toothbrush given to her by Svenge- her brother-in-law- an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian movies: "The Hot Hands of and Oslo Dentist," "Fillings of Passion," and "The Huge Molars of Horst Nordfink"...
If you RTFA, you'd notice that in fact the mailing list subscribers were not spammed. Whoever noticed the security hole was not a spammer, reported it, and the hole was plugged. So, yes, maybe it's funny, but they really were not spammed, which spoils the story.
::instart Fark.com "Ironic" tag here::
Both montypythonsspamalot.com, where 19,000 people had signed up for a newsletter, and movinoutonbroadway.com, where 14,000 had, were built by Mark Stevenson, a designer in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.
Mr. Stevenson said he had hired a programmer, whom he would not identify, to add the list sign-up function to the sites. He said that the amount of resources put into security on the sites had seemed adequate, but "in retrospect, this was not enough, and we need to do more."
Why would they use some obviously "home grown" half assed mailing list code when there are perfictly good and fairly sold apps out there like Mailman or EZmlm? Sounds like the "designer" hired some friend, prob. som kid who just learned about web scripting...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
... from a site designer who can't even spell "bandwidth"? (Or at least spell it twice...)
http://www.carapacearts.com/mark_stevenson.htm
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
SPAM SPAM
SPAM SPAM
SPAM SPAM
SPAM SPAM
SPAM SPAM
We aplogize for the spam, the creators of this website have been sacked
SPAM SPAM
SPAM SPAM
SPAM SPAM
SPAM SPAM
SPAM SPAM
We aplogize for the continued spam, the persons responsible for the sacking of the persons just sacked would like to announce that they have been sacked.
And for other websites, use BugMeNot, the firefox extension. Quite helpful.
Recently I noticed on a certain college website, every employee's email address was listed on a type of 'contact' page.
Every employee.
It actually was a three column table, on the left side it had the employee's name, next column was for e-mail, and the last for their phone number.
I was sitting with the Administrator that handles the email servers, when I heard recently there has been an ever more increasing spam flow to all the college email addresses.
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? Y
From my experience, though, often a web developer's clients push towards unsecure functionality because of cost/time considerations. I've been hired to add functionality to sites' existing shopping carts, for example, and when I've found and reported massive holes (a list of customers, orders, credit cards all accessable from a web page, for one), I've been met with heavy skepicism about the need to fix these holes now.
"How would anyone find that page?"
"Maybe we'll get to that once we add the international shipping feature."
etc. It gets tiring. After a while, you feel unappreciated. I'm not saying that something like this happened here, but at this point, I don't know that it DIDN'T happen...
My 2 cent American.
What if the web designer/programmer was actually someone sleeping in bed with the spammers ?
I would sleep in bed with spammers! They're all hot nubile chicks with pills to make me skinny and my penis huuuuuge!
...bloody vikings!
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
http://www.montypythonsspamalot.com/cgi-bin/spamal ot.cgi?email=
This html is full of artifacts. I would be surprised if they actually hired a web developer and didn't just screw up and use some free script they didn't fully understand.
You point to stuff. Your client sees that you might be right. (At this point, several exchanges over a few days or weeks.) They disappear for a while, to discus with their boss. They come back to you, reassuringly telling you that they don't think it's a problem. You object. They act annoyed. The entire project was supposed to be 1 days work for $300... You see what I mean?