ieee-data cron fails every month because it DDoSes an upstream website

[Lukas Erlacher]

This is a known and fixed upstream bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=826104

The package tries to update its data every month from an apparently not so strong host, causing a classic thundering horde DDoS.

Debian fixed this by deciding the cronjob wasn't such a good idea after all and simply removing it.

The fixed version of the package is in zesty and above, while xenial still has a bad version.

_Release Information:_

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS
Release: 16.04

_Package Information:_

$ apt-cache policy ieee-data
ieee-data:
  Installed: 20150531.1
  Candidate: 20150531.1
  Version table:
 *** 20150531.1 500
        500 http://ubuntumirror.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://ubuntumirror.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/ubuntu xenial/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

_What you expected to happen:_

Nothing

_What happened instead:_

I got this e-mail from cron:

Subject: Cron <root@host> test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly )
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2017 06:55:47 +0200 (CEST)
From: Cron Daemon <root@host>
To: root@host

run-parts: /etc/cron.monthly/ieee-data exited with return code 1

[Lukas Erlacher (erlacher)]

Is there anything I can do to help get this fixed in xenial?

[Robie Basak (racb)]

Thank you for volunteering! Please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates#Procedure. If you need any help, please ask in #ubuntu-devel on IRC (Freenode) if you are able.