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

[Mike Kercher]

I have noticed that the number of viruses detected on my systems has decreased
too.  Perhaps this is the result of Admins, ISP's and users being more diligent
about virus eradication.  People like MailScanner users make the net safer on
the whole.  Although MiMail was touted to be running rampant, I received very
few infections on all of my servers.  None of them were from the US.

Mike


> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner mailing list
> [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of f ewf
> Sent: Friday, August 08, 2003 2:48 PM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: Mailscanner/Sophos detecting fewer and fewer
> viruses every day???
>
>
> 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.
>