Somewhat related to spam coming from Google servers, maybe someone can shed some light on what could be the motivation behind this activity:
In recent months I'm seeing instances where random personal mail accounts on a server I run would receive a barrage of mail in a short amount of time.
Mail seems to be bounced via Google Groups - they are sent from Google's IPs and have headers like X-Google-Group-Id, List-*, etc. all pointing to Google Groups. The actual group ID changes after each individual instance of this. However when I actually check e.g. the List-Archive URL, the group appears to be already been deleted.
The content of mail looks like it originates from various (legit-looking) random public web services, support requests, issue trackers, web contact forms etc. For example, a common reoccurring one is Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (as in something like "thank you for filing a document #123 with us").
No apparent phishing links, no attached malware, no short advertisements snuck into a text field etc. Just automated replies from "noreply@"-type addresses.
It does not seem to be the case of trying to hide another attack (as discussed here for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47609882) - over many instances I've not seen any other malicious activity. And this mail is filtered out easily enough based on Google's headers.
It all looks like there is some bot that a) creates a Google group and subscribes (one or more) random email addresses to a Google group and then b) enters the group's mail address into a bunch of random web forms that then send their automated responses to the group.
What could be the motivation for this? After the fact it's filtered pretty easily based on headers. It's not nearly enough volume to DoS the server. But why would someone go through the trouble of setting this up?
Yes. I got the same issue… and when someone replies, all users in the mailing list receive it… that’s why I would see a ton of replies saying please remove me from your mailing list. Very annoying. The only solution I found was to create an inbox rule to reject those, as I couldn’t unsubscribe
I just block the group address on the MTA, but it doesn't matter. In all instances so far when it came to my attention the group was already deleted. Next time they will use a different group and I don't want to blanket ban all Google Group mail for my users.
It's not even that much of a hassle. What worries me is that I don't understand why someone would go through the trouble of doing this for no apparent benefit. I hope I'm not somehow unknowingly enabling some sort of an attack on any of the entities sending these automated replies.
This complaint was sent to Google, probably because the cloudinary.com URL appeared in their search results.
It's doubtful anyone at Fiverr was made aware of this - unless Google typically forwards these complaints to the actual host of the offending URL. Even then, it would go to Cloudinary who would in turn need to notify their client. Many hops with plenty of "someone else's problem" barriers for the message to overcome.
Wiring mistakes can kill or burn down a house months or years after they have been done. You will not notice unconnected protective earth or badly dimensioned circuit breakers until something else breaks and the protective element is not there.
Probably not on Steam, but maybe still somewhere on the net. There used to be an open source game for unix-like systems simply called "atc" that gave you a text-mode view of a radar screen. You gave directions to pilots using the keyboard through some abbreviated text instructions. I know because it was pretty popular among some friends of mine back in the day.
I made a patch that made it a multiplayer networked game where each player controlled the space of one airport. When I was doing that I remember being surprised how the entire game was written as a parser in lex (or maybe yacc? not sure anymore) not straight C.
I'm reminded of something I've read somewhere "Nothing is more boring than listening about someone else's dreams".
I think it tells a lot about AI-generated art. People prompting the AI find it fascinating because they look at it with in the context of their internal thoughts and moods that led them to it. But the generated artwork itself doesn't communicate that context at all. A complete stranger will find it derivative and boring.
I'm guessing that looking at AI art prompted by your friend and family may be a middle road somewhere. So maybe the fact that you have such a positive opinion on AI art is because it's the people you know closely that are doing it.
No idea about Upwork, but I had about the same situation about some other company sending me mail I cared about for a reason and their mail was not getting delivered to me because their DMARC check was failing.
They said "thanks, we'll look into it" and kept sending broken mail for years.
My guess is if you're a big enough player Google learns to ignore your broken DMARC config or somebody knows somebody on the inside who can add an exception. And then your mail gets delivered to @gmail.com just fine and that means it's working and wtf is this guy complaining about.
Just this morning I opened up my RSS reader and found that it was flooded by weird, twisty prose exalting the virtues of online gambling. Since I follow a few blogs that post long form content I first thought this was satire or something, but after reading for a bit and seeing that the posts just never end my best guess was it's just AI slop indented to drive traffic to some gambling site - not clear which since there were not links. All posts came from a RSS feed of an apparently abandoned tech blog I was following that had the last legit post in 2020. My guess is the domain expired, a squatter bought it, saw a bunch of requests for the RSS feed and grabbed the opportunity. Although to what end I'm not sure.
In recent months I'm seeing instances where random personal mail accounts on a server I run would receive a barrage of mail in a short amount of time.
Mail seems to be bounced via Google Groups - they are sent from Google's IPs and have headers like X-Google-Group-Id, List-*, etc. all pointing to Google Groups. The actual group ID changes after each individual instance of this. However when I actually check e.g. the List-Archive URL, the group appears to be already been deleted.
The content of mail looks like it originates from various (legit-looking) random public web services, support requests, issue trackers, web contact forms etc. For example, a common reoccurring one is Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (as in something like "thank you for filing a document #123 with us").
No apparent phishing links, no attached malware, no short advertisements snuck into a text field etc. Just automated replies from "noreply@"-type addresses.
It does not seem to be the case of trying to hide another attack (as discussed here for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47609882) - over many instances I've not seen any other malicious activity. And this mail is filtered out easily enough based on Google's headers.
It all looks like there is some bot that a) creates a Google group and subscribes (one or more) random email addresses to a Google group and then b) enters the group's mail address into a bunch of random web forms that then send their automated responses to the group.
What could be the motivation for this? After the fact it's filtered pretty easily based on headers. It's not nearly enough volume to DoS the server. But why would someone go through the trouble of setting this up?
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