Re: Anti-vrus auto-replies

Jonas Anden wrote:
> Is there anyone other than me that considers all these antivirus
> autoreply messages to be more than a nuisance?

(snip)

Yep. I went out on a limb and several times publicly questioned our University's decision to autoreply to the "sender" of a virus or worm, even though I basically worked for the same department as the staff who had made that decision. Finally, they did decide to stop.

I used to run an E-mail server for my previous department here, and over 95% of the virus-infected E-mail that we received month after month were from one of the many worms that forge the FROM: and/or MAIL FROM: entry in the header. That means that less than 5% of the messages that would have been sent out would have went to those actually sending the virus.

<rant>
I know that if my company had a critical E-mail address essentially get knocked off of the net because some worm writer decided to use my critical E-mail address as the From: field of their worm, I would be consulting my attorney, looking to sue those using auto-responders for damages, including punitive damages for being so irresponsible. </rant>

Moral of the story: STOP AUTO-REPLYING WHEN A VIRUS IS RECEIVED!!!

My 0.02 $CURRENCY

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Brian

-- 
Brian Eckman
Security Analyst
OIT Security and Assurance
University of Minnesota
612-626-7737

"There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who
understand binary and those who don't."


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