OT - list mail trapped as virus (solved)

Alan Jackson ajackson
Mon May 17 11:56:33 PDT 2004


On Thu, 4 Dec 2003 09:46:37 -0600
"Jack Berger" <JBerger at midwestiso.org> wrote:

> Over the last couple of months I've received a couple of virus notifications from our virus scanner that messages from the list contained the m-e-l-i-s-s-a virus. It has confused me how a plain text message could be affected. I've contacted our security dept about it to no avail.
> 
> It turns out that our scanner was set to scan for the string m-e-l-i-s-s-a in messages. It took a couple of trapped messages to one of our execs from his daughter M-e-l-i-s-s-a to get any action on it. I believe the rule may still be in place, but at least now I know the cause (that is why I have included the dases in the string).
> 

Why doesn't it scan for "Hi, I'm a virus"? Sheesh! How dumb is that!

I scan for the first line of hex in the virus attachment proper with
no false negatives or false positives. It ain't rocket science.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Alan K. Jackson            | To see a World in a Grain of Sand      |
| alan at ajackson.org          | And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,         |
| www.ajackson.org           | Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand |
| Houston, Texas             | And Eternity in an hour. - Blake       |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


More information about the Linux-users mailing list