On Wed, Aug 20, 2003 at 02:48:11PM -0700, Kuo, Jimmy wrote: > Are you referring to the situation where you get the Undeliverable message > because your name got forged in the From field, or about warnings issued by > AV companies on all the viruses, or both? > > OK, sounds like the latter. Sorry about that. We do tell people not to > forward virus warnings, because that's how hoaxes circulate. Rather, they > can/should forward just enough and make sure to have include a URL that will > actually have the lengthy explanation. (And also that information might > change, and be updated, rather than the stagnated original warning.) No, Alan's specifically talking about automatic responses generated by anti-virus software, typically running in conjunction with a mail server. For example, I just received about 15 minutes ago the following alert: From: "Virus Watchdog" <Watchdog@private> To: <STEVE@private> Subject: Warning: Possible Virus Infection This is an automatic message from the Guinevere Internet Antivirus Scanner. A message was received from you with a subject of Thank you! The message was addressed to fink@private The message probably contains a virus. You will want to consult with your system administator on how to deal with this. Of course the message had a spoofed From or From: line, so why send me the alert? Similarly, when we issue PGP/GPG signed security updates, we routinely get multiple autmoatic responses back with alerts like: GROUP WatchDog/M Server: S110LN06/SSKHAN/DE@SpkHannover ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Your mail has contained attachments which caused an error during a virus scan. There are many offenders out there, and I don't know if any of your products are guilty of such behavior. If they are, I would urge you to convince your management that they need to not engage in such behavior. Thanks. -- Steve Beattie Don't trust programmers? <steve@private> Complete StackGuard distro at http://NxNW.org/~steve/ immunix.org http://www.sardonix.org -- Audit code, earn respect.
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