Minimizing virus email in queue?

Tim Tyler tyler at beloit.edu
Wed Nov 28 19:52:08 GMT 2001


Nick and all,
  Yes, my hope was for something like a Timeout.Queuereturn header being
attached to virus messages, but I don't know if this is compliant with
how sendmail works.  I can even live with a reduced time setting such as 1
day if that were an alternative for virus email.
  In some ways I agree with the point that it may be the wrong thing to do.
However, there is the potential for a DoS aspect to this if enough students
with viruses fill up queue space with messages to legitimate (but
unreachable) domains.  Currently, we try to get students to clean up their
viruses, but that takes time and many students don't update their
definitions very often if they even have antivirus software.
  The nice thing about an "expire" setting is that it would force the
message to return to the sender or POstmaster sooner.  This would be ideal.
If the body will be stripped away by Mailscanner, then there is even less
reason to keep the message in queue since the objective from the sender's
and recipient's perspective is going to fail anyways.

  Tim

>
>On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 06:27:30PM -0000, Steven Patterson wrote:
>
>> Perhaps (with sendmail) you can set Timeout.Queuereturn=0d when you're
>> pushing the delivery of a virus message or something?
>
>I'm no sendmail expert. If this will actually prevent it from ever getting
>into the queue then I suppose it might work.
>
>I guess it depends on how the logic is structured in sendmail (is it? ;)...
>if "sending a message right now" is basically a special case, then I
>suppose it might work. If "sending a message right now" uses the same logic
>as "run a delivery attempt on this queued message", then probably not.
>
>
>We'll see?
>--
>Nick Phillips -- nwp at lemon-computing.com
>Courage is your greatest present need.
>


--
Tim Tyler
Network Manager - Beloit College
tyler at beloit.edu
Go Packers! Go Badgers!
1999&2000 Rose Bowl Champions!



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