What's up with all the spam on several FreeBSD mailing lists?

[Robert Watson]

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Ross Finlayson wrote:

> What is the reason for the sudden flood of spam on several FreeBSD mailing 
> lists?  Do these lists no longer require that senders be subscribed to the 
> list?  Or are legitimate senders' computers infected with a virus that is 
> sending the spam in their names?

Last weekend, hub.FreeBSD.org, the main FreeBSD mailing list server, blew 
itself to pieces (literally there were holes in some of the chips).  It was 
running FreeBSD 4.x at the time.  The admin team had been preparing to replace 
it anyway, with a shiny new 6.x system, and had to bring the replacement into 
service on much shorter notice than expected.  As a result there were several 
nits, one of which was that spamd doesn't/didn't appear to be working 
properly.  I know the admins are looking at it, so if it hasn't already been 
fixed, it will be shortly.

Robert N M Watson