An Email from teh Trinity Cat

andrew

So...the Trinity Cat has access to the undergrads mailing list?

Kwekubo

And she appears to have a tcd.ie email address. How delightful.

andrew

Someone please make an appropriate lolcat macro.

Kwekubo

TouchingVirus

Poor enough restrictions on the undergrads mailing list :P

KTHX!

zam

Fabulous

Ahoyhoy

This is BRILLIANT

gaybitch

Someone smart and/or 1337 explain to me how this came to pass

TakeTheVeil

Sent to the postgrad list too.. fantastic

Postgrad email list couldnt possibly be just "postgrads@tcd.ie" is it?

Ahoyhoy

Prendergast did it. He's trying to get in with the students by making friends with the popular people on campus, like Trinity Cat.

TakeTheVeil wrote: »

Sent to the postgrad list too.. fantastic

Postgrad email list couldnt possibly be just "postgrads@tcd.ie" is it?

That is the e-mail address but the address you send the e-mail from has to be on a list of approved e-mail addresses that is assembled by ISS. This has to be a Computer Science Scholar/Postgrad/Lecturer/Genius.

Sir Ophiuchus

andrew wrote: »

So...the Trinity Cat has access to the undergrads mailing list?

And a keyboard, apparently. And fingers.

languagenerd

Haha I had to look at that email twice to make sure I wasn't imagining things.

Reckon it was a hack or have the IS Services guys just lost it? :P

timmywex

This email is amazing!

Also its amazing how it got sent! Bet ISS wont be happy

Its either an inside job from ISS somewhere, someone very smart from computer science or someone from google potentially...

Daniakall

ISS inside job? =p

unknownlegend

I'm a postgrad, no emails of feline origin yet. :-)

Incredibly simple to make an email appear to be sent by anyone by the way. And all it needs to be sent to is the correct user list and voila.

Edit: puuuurrrrrrrrr!

Ron DMC

unknownlegend wrote: »

I'm a postgrad, no emails of feline origin yet. :-)

Incredibly simple to make an email appear to be sent by anyone by the way. And all it needs to be sent to is the correct user list and voila.

Edit: puuuurrrrrrrrr!

Well, that isn't the case, because it wasn't spoofed to look like it came from someone on the approved list, and that wouldn't work anyway because ISS use SPF.

But the email does appears to come from trinity.cat which isn't even a valid email address, so clearly a combination of spoofing and some kind of way of getting around the approval list must have occured.

Quite the accomplishment, though a waste of an email, there's so much that could have been said instead.

Ahoyhoy

Ron DMC wrote: »

there's so much that could have been said instead.

I don't think it would have been anywhere near as popular if they had tried to put in anything besides lolz, plus any recriminations for whoever did it would probably be worse. I reckon less is more.

Also thanks for the details!

timmywex

Ron DMC wrote: »

Well, that isn't the case, because it wasn't spoofed to look like it came from someone on the approved list, and that wouldn't work anyway because ISS use SPF.

But the email does appears to come from trinity.cat which isn't even a valid email address, so clearly a combination of spoofing and some kind of way of getting around the approval list must have occured.

Quite the accomplishment, though a waste of an email, there's so much that could have been said instead.

Why isnt trinity.cat a valid address? Surely the same as firstname.lastname@tcd.ie or similar? Tried sending a reply and it did seem spoofed however, or the account had already been deleted!

andrew

I hope whoever did it is reading this thread. Well done, whoever you are.

dan719

It was me.

Lol JK I can't even turn on a pc sometimes.

So, does anyone have any educated guesses to how this was done?

gearoidof

There's beauty in brevity, Misteil

tolosenc

OMFG. This is fantastic...

unknownlegend

SPF has plenty of flaws and SMTP doesn't need a valid email address, any characters will do.

lost_soul

It's actually really really simple to do if they did it they way I know. It just takes a bit of luck stumbling across where to do it form.

Daniakall

lost_soul wrote: »

It's actually really really simple to do if they did it they way I know. It just takes a bit of luck stumbling across where to do it form.

Vague and suggestive.
I'm dubious. =p

TrollHammaren

I'd rather not know who did it or how it was done - it's a lot more magical to think of a hypersapient cat with poor English advocating a change in timetables for us undergrads. :pac:

cookiemonst3r

SOGOOD

Daniakall

If nothing else, this served as a nice little pre- exam morale boost. Something to talk about... Possibly with far reaching implications though, I wonder how ISS will react.

TrollHammaren

Daniakall wrote: »

If nothing else, this served as a nice little pre- exam morale boost. Something to talk about... Possibly with far reaching implications though, I wonder how ISS will react.

I reckon the only thing that will come of this will be a slap on the wrist.

The Black Oil

The first move by Skynet? >.<

Denerick

Can someone post up the email??

almostnever

(message) CAN WE HAS OLDD TIMETABLE BK PLZKTNX

Srsly.

boblong

Denerick wrote: »

Can someone post up the email??

http://i.imgur.com/dqjmk.png

Email wrote:

from Trinity Cat <trinity.cat@tcd.ie>
reply-to Trinity Cat <trinity.cat@tcd.ie>
to undergrads@tcd.ie
date 19 April 2011 17:18
subject Timetable Update
hide details 17:18 (17 hours ago)
(message) CAN WE HAS OLDD TIMETABLE BK PLZKTNX

Denerick

Haha! Whoever came up with that is a genius (A brave one) Trinity security are essentially humorless nazi's, they'll find whoever did it and crush them with an iron fist.

PurpleFistMixer

Trinity security police the web as well? Is there anything they can't do?

JonJoeDali

I hope Paddy Prendergast gets a decent pedigree cat and that mongrel that roams around is chased off. It's very common for the master/provost at Oxbridge colleges to have a cat.

Lawliet

JonJoeDali wrote: »

I hope Paddy Prendergast gets a decent pedigree cat and that mongrel that roams around is chased off.

Some inbred house cat wouldn't last one day against a proud tom like the Trinity Cat!

zuchum

They may backtrace the IP. Consequences will never be the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4OGNEV-cpQ

Pet

Denerick wrote: »

Haha! Whoever came up with that is a genius (A brave one) Trinity security are essentially humorless nazi's, they'll find whoever did it and crush them with an iron fist.

Um, what? Trinity security are utter gents (aside from the odd bad apple).

tewson

We know their IP address, don't we?

87-198-221-66.static.ptr.magnet.ie
87.198.221.66

And the email was probably sent using a software named WebMonitor written in Perl.

TrollHammaren

Pet wrote: »

Um, what? Trinity security are utter gents (aside from the odd bad apple).

Yeah, there's that one tall dickhead who looks like a failed Garda, but the rest of them are absolutely bang-on. They've never been anything but pleasant to me.

Denerick

Pet wrote: »

Um, what? Trinity security are utter gents (aside from the odd bad apple).

You obviously haven't had a run in with the 'no urination in public' brigade.

TrollHammaren

Denerick wrote: »

You obviously haven't had a run in with the 'no urination in public' brigade.

Chances are it's because he didn't urinate in public

Jonathan

tewson wrote: »

We know their IP address, don't we?

87-198-221-66.static.ptr.magnet.ie
87.198.221.66

Which is feck all use really. That IP is owned by CompuB on Grafton St.

Unregistered.

Jonathan wrote: »

Which is feck all use really. That IP is owned by CompuB on Grafton St.

We know the IP and the time the email was sent. I'm sure they have CCTV in CompuB. Whoever can view the CCTV will surely be able to pick out Catman. I wouldn't say it would be possible for ISServices to say "hey, we want to see your CCTV" and CompuB having to comply.

andrew

Jonathan wrote: »

Which is feck all use really. That IP is owned by CompuB on Grafton St.

If it could be done from a publicly accessible computer like the one's there, can't have been that hard to do surely. Also, I'm impressed by the lengths whoever it was went to in order to not get caught.

Unregistered.

andrew wrote: »

Also, I'm impressed by the lengths whoever it was went to in order to not get caught.

Easily impressed.

tehjimmeh

andrew wrote: »

Also, I'm impressed by the lengths whoever it was went to in order to not get caught.

Walking across the road?

Having looked through the headers and done some googling I'm pretty sure I know how it was done, but not sure on some details. There was either some cleverness involved or none at all. And it doesn't seem to have been as impressive a subversion of the system as it might look.

andrew

tehjimmeh wrote: »

Walking across the road?

Having looked through the headers and done some googling I'm pretty sure I know how it was done, but not sure on some details. There was either some cleverness involved or none at all. And it doesn't seem to have been as impressive a subversion of the system as it might look.

Bothering to walk across the road and do it from a public computer instead of just using tor or something speaks to a level of paranoia and forethought which I find impressive at least anyway.

aas

'Sent from my iPad' at the bottom would have sealed the deal

TrollHammaren

Trinity isn't exactly known for its harsh discipline; I don't think I've ever even heard of Emma Stokes dishing out the harsh punishments, and she was known for being a bit of a wench. Tim Trimble is the Junior Dean now, and he's pretty laid back. I doubt anyone thinks it's worth their while to investigate, but even if they do I reckon the culprit will be told they're a bold boy or girl. They'll be a hero with the student population, though