Control messages are a special kind of

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

post that are used to control

news server A news server is a collection of software used to handle Usenet articles. It may also refer to a computer itself which is primarily or solely used for handling Usenet. Access to Usenet is only available through news server providers. Articles an ...

s. They differ from ordinary posts by a header field named Control. The body of the field contains control name and arguments. There are two historical alternatives to header field Control. They are not supported by contemporary software and forbidden according to RFC 5537. However, the traditional format of the subject line is widely used in addition to the Control header: the subject line consists of the word "cmsg" followed by control name and arguments.

Types

cancel

A cancel message requests the deletion of a specific article. The body of the Control field contains one argument, the Message-ID of the article to delete. According to RFC 1036 only the author of the target message or the local news administrator is allowed to send a cancel (cancels not meeting this condition are called "rogue cancels"). To verify authorization the line (or line, if it exists) of the cancel message must match the target article. This verification does not work well in modern day Usenet and is rarely used. Additional hierarchy specific rules (see Breidbart Index) allow cancelbots to send third-party cancels to remove

spam Spam most often refers to: * Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ...

. ;Example Control: cancel <[email protected]> Subject: cmsg cancel <[email protected]>

newgroup

A newgroup message is issued to create a new

Usenet newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are not only discussion groups or conversations, but also a repository to publish articles, start ...

. The body of the Control field contains one mandatory argument, the name of the new group. The second argument is optional. If present it consists of the keyword . The body of the message typically contains tagline, charter and rationale. If the group already exists, only the status of the group is changed, i.e. whether it is moderated or nor not. Typically newgroup messages having a correct digital signature are executed automatically. In some hierarchies (, , ) unsigned newgroup messages just serve as formalized proposal to create a new group. Objections to the proposal are then expressed with a . Regeln für die Einrichtung, Änderung und Entfernung von Usenet-Gruppen
/ref> In many cases newgroup messages are archived by the

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. ;Example Control: newgroup comp.object.moderated moderated Subject: cmsg newgroup comp.object.moderated moderated

rmgroup

A rmgroup message is issued to remove a newsgroup. The body of the Control field contains one mandatory argument, the name of the group to remove. Typically rmgroup messages having a correct digital signature are executed automatically. In some hierarchies unsigned rmgroup messages are used to veto a preceding newgroup. In the hierarchy removal and creation of groups is handled symmetrically, i.e. an unsigned rmgroup message is used as formalized proposal. Objections to the proposal are then expressed with a newgroup. ;Example Control: rmgroup comp.object.moderated Subject: cmsg rmgroup comp.object.moderated In 1995 the

Church of Scientology The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religiou ...

attempted to silence criticism by sending mass "rmgroup" messages to Usenet servers targeting alt.religion.scientology, an example of the church's continuing efforts to suppress material critical of

Scientology Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by the American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It is variously defined as a scam, a Scientology as a business, business, a cult, or a religion. Hubbard initially develo ...

on the

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. Most servers discarded the message, and those that did not were quickly sent "newgroup" messages reestablishing the newsgroup.

A message lists all groups of a hierarchy. ;Example Control: Subject: cmsg ;Example conforming to RFC 5537 Control: de !de.alt #2009021301

Obsolete message types

The protocol was obsoleted by NNTP. Answering control messages with large emails can be exploited for a

Denial of service In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyberattack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host co ...

attack. Thus

s stopped implementing long before it was declared obsolete by RFC 5537.

Security considerations

Header field "Approved:"

Messages of type and are ignored unless there is an "Approved" line in the same message header. News servers traditionally allow only selected users to send articles with these lines. As long as there were only a handful of Usenet sites this provided sufficient protection against abuse.

Digital signature

The format of "Arpa Internet Text Messages" is the common base for

and

E-mail Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

. The format provides no means of

authentication Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an Logical assertion, assertion, such as the Digital identity, identity of a computer system user. In contrast with iden ...

. Various extensions adding a digital signature were developed to prevent forgeries. For control message a special format is required since the essential information is in the header fields. Pgpcontrol was originally designed for PGP but also works with

OpenPGP Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partit ...

Hierarchy keys

Newsgroup maintenance of the main Usenet hierarchies ( Big 8 and regional hierarchies) is done through signed control messages. Each hierarchy has unique key that is guarded by the hierarchy founders (or their successors). Most news servers are configured to both automatically execute controls signed with the right key and ignore anything else. Theoretically this system is also applicable to cancel messages. However, it would not only require a key pair for every Usenet user but also that the respective public key is known to every news server. Cancel-lock is much simpler, but neither commonly accepted, nor implemented in popular news servers and newsreaders.

Archiving

Control messages are typically not shown in the target

newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are not only discussion groups or conversations, but also a repository to publish articles, start ...

. Instead many servers put them into pseudo newsgroups like control.

Google Groups Google Groups is a service from Google that provides discussion groups for people sharing common interests. Until February 2024, the Groups service also provided a gateway to Usenet newsgroups, both reading and posting to them, via a shared user ...

provides no means to read or write control messages. It does not even execute cancels. The

archives and together as a single file per group and as one file per year.{{cite web , url=https://ftp.isc.org/pub/usenet/control/other.ctl/ , title=FTP link , work=ftp.isc.org

References

Usenet fr:Message de contrôle