Mailscanner/Sophos detecting fewer and fewer viruses every day???

f ewf mailinglists at PC.CHICAGO.IL.US
Fri Aug 8 20:47:57 IST 2003


This implementation of mailscanner only scans incoming messages at this
time.  I could try installing ClamAV and see what happens.  Currently, 0.2%
of e-mails received are viruses (1 in 500).  During it's peak at the intial
installation it was finding around 3.7%.

Thanks!



At 02:23 PM 8/8/2003, you wrote:
>On Friday 08 August 2003 8:00 pm, f ewf wrote:
>
> > My mailscanner installation is exhibiting behavior which may be symptoms of
> > malfunctioning.  When I first installed mailscanner + sophos three weeks
> > ago mailscanner-mrtg reported 840 finds the first day, 840 the second, 620
> > the third, 420 the fourth, 250 the fifth, 210 the sixth.
> >
> > Are these normal virus detection patterns, or is something configured
> > incorrectly or malfunctioning?
>
>If you're doubtful about whether Sophos is working correctly, try adding
>another virus scanning engine to the system and see if anything gets picked
>up by one and not the other.   I recommend you try ClamAV - it's free, it's
>Open Source, and in the past few months it's become tremendously better, with
>some pretty prompt updates in the past few weeks as well.
>
>One possible explanation for your diminishing virus detection rates is that
>internal machines are not getting infected and then trying to send the
>viruses out again?   What anti-virus measures did you have in place before
>implementing MailScanner & Sophos?
>
> > What percentage of mail, on average, is a virus?
>
>That depends a lot on whether you're measuring incoming or outgoing mail, or
>both.   I see something like 2%, for both inbound & outbound mail (but I have
>no idea whether that's considered "normal").
>
>Regards,
>
>Antony.
>
>--
>
>If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it,
>we'd be so simple that we couldn't.



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