[APD] RE: Viruses and worms.

[Bill Wichers <billw at waveform_net>]

> "Robert H" said:
> <<What I find annoying is the hundreds of email
> notifications I am getting saying email I never sent
> was undeliverable.>>
>
> Doesn't undeliverable email bounce back to the sender?

Yes, if (1) the email address in the to: field of the message is incorrect, 
AND (2) the receiving mail server is configured to bounce back such 
messages. Most of the worms are using addresses pulled from people's 
address books, and private address books tend to contain primarily good 
address. The spammer people are the people who have a lot of bad addresses 
to work with, the worms are starting with almost entirely good addresses.

> People who set up the mail servers should learn how
> to properly configure the anti-virus features to
> avoid situations like this.

This is unfortunately not possible in most cases. I run a high-volume mail 
server at work with well over 100 active domains. We handle several hundred 
thousand *legitimate* messages per month, not including the spam we filter. 
The worms (we bounce an infected message every 1-3 minutes on average) have 
been forging the headers in the messages in such a way that there is not 
really any way to determine that the message is not legitimate.

The only real solution to the recent worm problems is for people to keep 
their systems up to date with security patches, which is very easy to do 
with features like "Windows Update". It would help if Microsoft would also 
take security more seriously but they don't have a good track record with 
that unfortunately.

        -Bill


*****************************
Waveform Technology
UNIX Systems Administrator

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