Virus Distribution via this group

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Wed Dec 10 05:08:46 2003

On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 08:15, Pete Turnbull wrote:

> Of course, one could also argue that whatever is misinterpreting the
> email in question is also broken, and should be fixed.

Well I'd say yes. It would appear that the software in question isn't
doing any kind of analysis on the actual content of the messages at all
(otherwise some - probably most / all - would get through and a few
might be flagged as potential threats due to certain binary patterns in
the text)

That seems a little over-cautious of the software to me, given that the
messages are presumably arriving as plain text and not as an attachment.
Unless of course the affected people are using email software that
blindly tries to run anything that looks like it has some kind of macro
embedded in it :) If a sensible email client is being used one would
hope that it is an option in the virus software than can be turned off.
Whether questionable headers mean that the emails should be flagged as
potential spam is another matter... :-)

The world seems to have become a complex place... I miss the days of
command-line mail clients, and if you really wanted to send an
attachment it was a case of encoding it yourself and relying on the
recipient knowing how to decode it...

cheers

Jules
Received on Wed Dec 10 2003 - 05:08:46 GMT