[QE-users] Security Problem for Quantum Espresso Mailing List

[Evren Ataman]

Dear Robert

I am not an administrator of this list, neither an IT guy, just passing you
the information I have got.
As far as I understand, the Quantum Espresso Users Forum is using version
2.1.15 of GNU Mailing List Manager and the current version is 3.2.0, please
have a look at http://www.list.org/.
There is a long discussion from November 2011 forum among the users about
the issue of plain text passwords sent by email. I suggest you to have a
look.
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2011-November/thread.html
The discussion starts with an email titled "How to turn off plain text
passwords?" and goes on at least 15 email exchanges.
Apparently, it is a known issue among the developers and it is how Mailman
version 2 is set up. As far as I understand, passwords are even stored with
an encryption which is slightly outdated and can be "figured out" by some
effort with the current technology.
Long story short Version 2 of Mailman software is not the most secure thing
on earth.
1- The ultimate way of solving this problem for everybody is installing
Version 3.X.
2- Partial solution for you (if you do not trust your email provider)
switch off receiving monthly emails.
3- Another partial solution for you is to use a "dummy" password that you
do not use elsewhere.
4- The ultimate solution for you is to unsubscribe from the list.

Regards








On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 at 00:56, Robert Molt <r.molt.chemical.physics at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Sirs and Madames:
>
> There is a significant security lapse for this list-serv. The mailing list
> monthly reminder  writes the user's password out, in the email. This is *not
> *acceptable security practice in the present day; it is not OK to ever
> have an email list out a user's password for any reason. It is important to
> not allow one compromised account (say, email) lead to further compromises.
>
> I please ask that this be remedied.
>
> --
> Dr. Robert Molt Jr.r.molt.chemical.physics at gmail.com
> IUPUI
>
> _______________________________________________
> users mailing list
> users at lists.quantum-espresso.org
> https://lists.quantum-espresso.org/mailman/listinfo/users
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