[Sussex] Forward: Another SLUG?

[Steve 'Dobbo' Dobson]

Hi Everyone

A little while ago there was a posting to the LUG Masters list about
a new "User Group" for SUSE.  It costs to join, and it runs it's
web server on "Windows Server 2003" so this looks mighty suspicious
to me.

My quick analysis and reply is below.  I wouldn't want anyone to
be taken in my this, if it is a scam.

The sites URL is www.ukslug.org.uk.  I have removed there message
but if anyone wants to read it just replay and I'll post that too.

Steve

----- Forwarded message from Steve 'Dobbo' Dobson <steve at dobson.org> -----

Subject: Re: [lugmaster] Another SLUG?
From: Steve 'Dobbo' Dobson <steve at dobson.org>
Reply-To: "A closed discussion list for UK LUGMasters." [email removed]
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:21:42 +0100

Gavin

On Sun, Sep 16, 2007 at 11:39:04PM +0100, Gavin Westwood (MKLUG) wrote:
> Does anyone know any more about this new group, and have they received
> an email like this?

Never heard of them.

> I'm holding off posting it to my list at the moment.  For one thing:

I think that wise.

> "Membership, which costs £250, entitles two people from each member
> organisation to attend meetings. Suppliers of SUSE related services or
> software are also encouraged to join the User Group at the special rate
> of £350pa.  Individual Membership will be £100 per annum."
> 
> To me this makes the below sound more like advertising...

I would be suspicious too.

whois(1) has the registrant as Blueloop Ltd (one of the claimed partners)
along with Groupware User Group and Novell.

An nmap(1) of their website showed:
PORT     STATE SERVICE
23/tcp   open  telnet
25/tcp   open  smtp
80/tcp   open  http
81/tcp   open  hosts2-ns
443/tcp  open  https
444/tcp  open  snpp
1723/tcp open  pptp

Who runs an open telnet port these days?!?!?!

But when I used netcraft to check out the site there was no info on 
the summary page.  So I thought I would take a look at the availability
graph to see what I could see:

  http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.ukslug.org.uk

And look what I found:

OS:	Windows Server 2003
Server:	Apache/2.2.4 (Win32) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.4 OpenSSL/0.9.8e PHP/5.2.3

Would you pay money to join an organisation that doesn't even use the
software it claims to support?

May I suggest that you forward their posting attempt (and this email if
you wish) to Novell.  They may wish to take action.

Steve

----- End forwarded message -----
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/sussex/attachments/20070916/0c7c05b8/attachment.pgp