Connection to the news server with telnet

Description:
This article give some tips how we can access an news server with telnet and read some news message

My ISP are telenet, yes a bit frustrant, it's not 'telnet'. That why when i try to make an 'telnet' connection, i always type 'telenet' :-/

Making an telnet connection to the news server

telnet news.telenet.be 119

Once connected, you want to view which commands are available.

help

That gave me an little list with the commands:

100 Legal Commands
  article [|number]
  authinfo type value
  body [|number]
  date
  group newsgroup
  head [|number]
  help
  last
  list [active wildmat|active.times|counts wildmat]
  list [overview.fmt|newsgroups wildmat]
  listgroup newsgroup
  mode reader
  newgroups yyyymmdd hhmmss [GMT]
  newnews newsgroups yyyymmdd hhmmss [GMT]
  next
  post
  stat [|number]
  xhdr field [range]
  xover [range]
  xpat field range pattern
  quit
.

We now need to connect to an group

group be.test

If you not know to which group you want connect. Try the command 'list'. You get an long list and probably not view what you want. It's best that you know to which group you want to connect. If you read this article and want to try. Try on the 'test' group. In my case it's 'be.test'.

Right. Now time to get an article. We need to know which article id we want. Or you can get one with.

next

And that gave me :

223 47872 <9nvl9l$1dcb$1@rivage.news.be.easynet.net>

To get the head of an message:

head 47872

And that gave me:

221 47874 <3BA35BD4.4C174722@punkpage.net>
Path: phobos.telenet-ops.be!afrodite.telenet-ops.be!ossa.telenet-ops.be!afrodite.telenet-ops.be.POSTED!not-for-mail
Message-ID: <3BA35BD4.4C174722@punkpage.net>
From: Punk Page Peter 

The body of it :

body 47872

222 47874 <3BA35BD4.4C174722@punkpage.net>
> cat /dev/null > /bin/laden
> Da's pijnlijker ;-)

Zou wel een goeie straf voor 'm zijn. Beter dan onschuldige landgenoten
van 'm bombarderen, wat Amerika van plan is (en waartegen een petitie te
vinden is op www.punkpage.nl - allemaal gaan tekenen nu!).
.

The same way goes to read all the messages. And that's why the world have evoluate a bit and we no need to view news message at this way. It's sure you could do it. But like the way i have show, you could not send an message to the server. Like you are not identified. Or you cracked that thing...