back to article You can ring my #bellogate. EMAIL STORM hits 29,000 hapless UCL students

Sysadmins at the University College London (UCL) are battling an email storm after spam messages were sent to nearly 29,000 people on an all-student mailing list. The uni's IT director Mike Cope apologised for the blunder, which happened overnight. UCL students woke up to find spam messages clogging up their university email …

  1. Jo 5

    face plam

    The elite gifted intellects of the future? Or moronic self entitled work dodgers? Even my 12 year old knows to not reply or click links on or unsubscribe from a dodgy looking email.

    As Pal Calf said, students, i hate students, bag of shi...

    1. Irongut

      Re: face plam

      Speaking of face palm... they might not know they shouldn't reply to the list but you don't know how to type and then proof read.

      Which is worse?

    2. Psyx
      Facepalm

      Re: face plam

      " i hate students"

      Damn that edumafication thing! It just cause trubbole!

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Mushroom

        Re: face plam

        Better use the nucular option!

    3. Terry 6 Silver badge

      Re: face plam

      I guess that's just a poor attempt at trolling. Ho hum.

  2. ZSn

    Funny enough the ucl alumni mail accounts *haven't* been spammed but I believe that that doesn't run on the outlook.com servers the the undergrads do (and is free) but some other companies servers (and that you have to pay for). Perhaps a paid for account that isn't controlled by some microsoft subsiduary is the answer?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I work for a large company...

    ...and like all large companies, we occasionally have staff cutbacks.

    I've often thought that it would be a good idea to send a message to the whole company, about some nonsense that would not be relevant to anyone. The name of each person who sends "please remove me from this mailing list" and replies to all should be forwarded to the HR department and automatically added to the cutback list.

    Anon, obviously.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: I work for a large company...

      Please unsubscribe me from the redundancy list!

      THX

    2. Crazy Operations Guy

      Re: I work for a large company...

      Using reply-all on an email that was sent to a large list should be a fire-able offense anyway... Also, expanding very large mailing lists before sending, BCC'ing large distribution groups, and overly-large signatures.

      1. asdf

        Re: I work for a large company...

        >Using reply-all on an email that was sent to a large list should be a fire-able offense anyway

        A lot of companies actually disable the reply all button in Outlook on corporate computers using policies.

    3. TitterYeNot

      Re: I work for a large company...

      The best reply-all response to one of these internal corporate mail storms I've seen is:

      "Please unsubscribe me from this mailing list. And if anyone else uses the reply-all button, the bunny gets it."

      At which point, predictably, HR stepped in with their own reply-all response...

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I work for a large company...

      Our company did something just like that but without the HR bit.

      Anyone who responded to the specially crafted message was targeted for additional training on keeping company data safe.

      Anon for obvious reasons

      1. Frankee Llonnygog

        Re: I work for a large company...

        HR - those that practice it are barely smart enough to spell it

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

          Re: I work for a large company...

          Nothing wrong in HR that cannot be solved with Going Postal Event.

        2. BongoJoe
          Headmaster

          Re: I work for a large company...

          HR - those that practice it are barely smart enough to spell it

          Shouldn't it be practise ?

          1. Frankee Llonnygog

            Re: I work for a large company...

            Verbification of nouns - I've been buzzworded

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I work for a large company...

        Yep, the large company I work for does that too - it may even be the same company.

      3. Alan Brown Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: I work for a large company...

        "Anyone who responded to the specially crafted message was targeted for additional training on keeping company data safe."

        Presumably almost all of HR ended up on the training course?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not so true

    UCL uses the abysmal ( lots of expletives..) email system called Office 365.

    so there was no load on the servers , only on M$FT side. the spam filter is shite anyway but making a schoolboy error and not limiting the DL so not everybody can email to it is unforgivable. its a bad system and with an even worse implementation. worst of all it replaced a system which worked well.

    Lets centralise !! and cock up everything

    Anon for obvious reasons

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not so true

      "UCL uses the abysmal ( lots of expletives..) email system called Office 365."

      That's based on Exchange which is by far the best corporate scale email system that there is.

      "the spam filter is shite"

      The SPAM filter is as good as you want it to be: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2014/08/18/spam-email-and-office-365-environment-connection-and-content-filtering-in-eop.aspx

      "but making a schoolboy error and not limiting the DL so not everybody can email to it is unforgivable."

      So that's the real issue here.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not so true

        Exchange is good

        they dont give control over anything, departments have their own IT and had their own Exchange boxes.

        now central IT deals with it only. the few hours a week spent on email related issues have risen by a significant amount since office 365 was shoved down the throat.

        trust me , it is a nightmare. for every issue they respond that our network causes the issue...

        i know the spam filter bit but doesn't have access to it....

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not so true

          So your real issue is that your IT department don't manage Office 365 effectively, not that the system itself is lacking...

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Not so true

            Thats true, but our point of view is :

            they took away our mail servers and promised a product and the product did not deliver

            1. ChubbyMcFiddles

              Re: Not so true

              your mail servers were not "taken away"

              Microsoft are all for the cloud

              give bill gates a ring you turd

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Not so true

                not taken away, but higher powers forced us not to have a departmental exchange server which was working fine.

                i turn the turd calling back at you ,,,

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Not so true

              'they took away our mail servers and promised a product and the product did not deliver'

              The problem here is that it did deliver.

              1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. Number6

          Re: Not so true

          It's scary though, I got a new phone and went to set up the work email on it. Then I discovered the list of things I had to allow the corporate email system to do to my phone, including a complete factory reset and disabling all sorts of things I use. So I don't have access to the work email system on my phone because I'm not agreeing to that list of permissions. I fully understand why such actions might be needed, but I don't wish to be subject to them so I opted out.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Fiat currencies

          "Now central IT deals with it only. the few hours a week spent on email related issues have risen by a significant amount since office 365 was shoved down the throat."

          Our departmental mail support load is up by a factor of at least 10 - we had to take on an extra staffer primarily because office365 is such a pile of shite compared to our previous solution.

          To add insult to injury, imap resources are deliberately restricted on a per-individual and sitewide basis and if you exhaust the individual limits (ie, if you handle lots of mail, where "lots" = slightly above average), you'll find yourself locked out for 24-48 hours, whilst the sitewide limits are reached virtually every day between 1130-1230 and 1600-1730, making checking mail a hit-and-miss affair (the support desk's canned answer is "Use the web interface, not an imap client")

          The whole stinking deal was a clusterfuck, took more than 3 years to implement, cost over 5 million squid and was probably sealed by a handshake on a golf course somewhere (the previous Provost announced the move to outsourced mail out of the blue and caught a lot of people by surprise, including ISD).

          Whilst the old mail system was a tad flaky that was entirely down to overloaded hardware (which was fairly old) and 5 million buys a LOT of hardware. What UCL has now is significantly worse than it used to have centrally and an utter disaster for departments who used to run their own well-maintained mailservers.

          The public accounts committee would have a field day.

          Anon because I work there.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Re: Not so true

      "Anon for obvious reasons"

      Would that be for the appalling spelling and grammar?

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not so true

      Unfortunately, the mailing list abused was not on the Live system - this was an in-house list with no controls on senders. The Office 365 distribution lists would not have allowed an external mail to be sent without authentication - I know, I've asked for this and they're not set up in this fashion.

      I suggest you limit your Microsoft bashing to times when they are actually at fault.

      AC as I work at UCL and actually have a clue about this. Had requested ACLs on the UCL based lists, or a move to Office 365 based lists several months ago..

  5. Ross K Silver badge
    WTF?

    Whoop De Doo

    Opened my UCL account and found 2785 unread emails - Thank you #bellogate! #lol

    2785 unread emails? Just another day in my Hotmail inbox...

    #bloodystudents #nobodygivesashit

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. chivo243 Silver badge

    sounds familiar

    Mail lists internally, Check.

    Many users belong to the same external lists, check.

    Many users on holiday with out of office replies enabled, check.

    One mail server somewhere not smart enough to send just one reply to the same message, check.

    Mail server running a bit hot, check!

    Inbox with 30,000 plus messages, check!!

  8. druck Silver badge
    Flame

    Panic

    My wife has started a masters at UCL and has only just been given access to the university mailing system. This afternoon she was trying to plough through the thousands of spams in her inbox, when she found that she has to do a presentation - tomorrow morning!

    1. opaque

      Re: Panic

      Tell her to not bother and just blame bellogate on the fact she didn't know ;)

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: Panic

        Why not implement a rule or two?

      2. druck Silver badge

        Re: Panic

        It did occur to her to pretend she hadn't seen it. She spent half the morning on the phone trying to confirm the time and location (missing from the email), complicated by the fact that voice mail wasn't working due to peoples email in-boxes being full of spam. In the end she went down there and did the presentation, and was glad she did.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    bello

    bello!

    1. asdf

      Re: bello

      Reply all: As Megamind would say, "Ollo?"

  10. Old Handle
    Headmaster

    A Beautiful War

    I wondered what it was supposed to mean. It could just be a misspelling of bellow, but apparently it could also mean "beautiful" or "war", depending on what language they're speaking. All of the above seem strangely apt.

  11. Rufus McDufus

    Wow, is it 1997 again?

  12. Shannon Jacobs
    Holmes

    Is it spam? Only your BOFH knows for sure?

    Not at all a clear presentation of the problem here. The original message was apparently some sort of trap, but what was the payload in the actual spam messages? The article is so fuzzy that I can't figure out if it is bad reporting or an attempt to protect a still-vulnerable attack vector--but I bet the spammers are all abuzz in that case.

    It does remind me of a countermeasure. The key problem is that there are some quasi-legit spammers like Best Buy. Sure, they send unsolicited spam, but they actually do have an unsubscribe mechanism, but there is no way to tell how bad a spammer Best Buy is from their spam. The email providers need to test the unsubscribe mechanisms with honeypot addresses and tell us whether or not they work. Mostly I'm talking to the EVIL google there, since they have made their unsubscribe button more accessible lately, but without providing ANY useful information about when to click on it.

    I think the Best Buy case is worth extra mention, by the way. I thought they were a good company and it had to be some kind of phishing scam buried in the giant spam. Boy, was I shocked when they admitted they were spammers. Let me assure you that I will NEVER buy anything from Best Buy or ANY other spammers.

  13. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Undergrads

    Many will be away from home for the first time.

    Most will have gone from a protected school system to the Uni's system, which supposedly has much more sophisticated and grown up IT support than their schools' did.

    Most will trust their Uni's systems for all of those reasons and because it is, after all, their Uni to which they have a general trust and loyalty. (Unlike in my day, when the University's admininstration was automatically seen as the enemy with suits).

    Add in that ( also unlike in my day) they have a heavy workload of assignments coming their way - probably mostly by email.

    It's not surprising that these kids didn't act like seasoned IT professionals.

    (Caveat - if they have a computer science faculty and those students responded so poorly they should all be given an immediate fail IMO).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Undergrads

      Innmy experience the CS students are exactly the ones that will respond poorly.

  14. Dr Patrick J R Harkin

    They put 29,000 students...

    ...on an UNMODERATED mailing list? I'm amazed their servers didn't melt years ago. Nothing goes on our lists unless it's checked.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: They put 29,000 students...

      I must admit, that did make me wonder a bit. I guess the Uni's registry has details of all the students, including the email they've given and the one they've been assigned. But why that comes on to a unified mailing list is another matter.

      When the students applied they will have used their own address.

      When they started their course they will have been assigned a name.name@institution.ac.uk address. I guess that has to be in a central list / database so that a unique name can be assigned.

      But after that, why it is accessible to send to all the list members is a bit of a question.

  15. AdamT

    Bank Details?

    It wouldn't have occured to me that bank details might be at risk from a simple reply-all/spam/email storm. But, <engage tinfoil hat> why would he feel the need to specifically mention that?

    Reminds me a bit of this xkcd: http://xkcd.com/463/

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