Re: Virus incident
On Wed, Nov 21, 2001 at 06:11:22PM -0700, Josh Everist wrote:
> Well I can take responsibility for the messages from
> 'antigen@page1book.com', however if the Debian User mailing list didn't send
> out viruses in the first place, there wouldn't be the automated reply.
Then the automated reply is broken. As far as I know, this list
doesn't filter anything- with the possible exception of blocking
an address after repeated annoyances, such as your automated
mailer. So, regarding that, it really shouldn't be sending junk
mail to the receipients of the message. Replying to the sender
is understandable. Beyond that, if you feel it's your duty /
responsibility / whim to warn your users of a virus, then at
least have it only automatically reply to *your users*. Let
other people deal with the problem themselves. However, all of
what I've just said would be irrelevant if this remailer was at
all sane and used the actual addresses the mail was being
delivered to in the first place instead of spamming anyone that
happened to be in the "To:" field of the message.
> The same goes for the YODA messages.
>
> In all honesty I've merely kept up with my software and virus updates and
> don't actually know why my software automatically responded.
If you don't know what your software is doing and why, then
you aren't keeping up nearly well enough.
> However, if there were no response, it wouldn't be nearly as obvious that
> the email from m.dobsicek@sh.cvut.cz was viral.
Thanks. The HTML-and-binary-attachment-only messages on a Linux
mailing list weren't obvious enough. The 5 or so warnings per
original helped a lot. (And if there's anyone out there these
days that still needs such blatantly obvious warnings has bigger
problems to worry about than email viruses.)
> So, if there's any way the mailing list can filter out the viruses in the
> first place, you won't see the automated messages. At any rate I hope people
> go after the real culprit(the sender of the virus) and don't take it out on
> us.
First, multiple replies per original message is annoying.
Second, others have suggested the replies are badly formatted
as well, regarding standard email protocols. Finally...
If A -> B -> C, and C needs to be prevented, stopping either
A or B will solve the problem. You're apparently capable of
fixing B, but apparently not willing to do anything about it.
I can filter my mail. I can also complain / rant / flame. And
so I have.
Thanks for making your problems ours as well,
Mike McGuire
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