Can virus report be in message body instead of in an attachment?

MailScanner mailscanner at SMITS.CO.UK
Thu Apr 22 10:16:16 IST 2004


Why do you want to notify your users that they would have received a
virus? Most current viruses contain an SMTP engine so the virus does not
have to attach itself to an existing executable and it spoofs the
sender. The user is therefore told of an infection that doesn't affect
them, with an attachment that is gone after cleaning from a sender that
they can't easily recognise or trace. How do they benefit from all that
knowledge?

We silently drop viruses without any notification. Recipients don't get
alarmed, spoofed senders don't get annoyed and admins don't get a flood
of notifications with every worm outbreak. Virus counts end up in the
statistics (mailwatch, mrtg).

Bart...

-----Original Message-----
From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On
Behalf Of Hancock, Scott
Posted At: 21 April 2004 21:22
Posted To: MailScanner
Conversation: Can virus report be in message body instead of in an
attachment?
Subject: Can virus report be in message body instead of in an
attachment?


Most of my users and often my peers will not open an attachment if the
word {Virus?} is in the subject.

The warning in the message body is consistently forwarded to me, for
example:

Warning: This message has had one or more attachments removed
Warning: (msg-10816-493.html).
Warning: Please read the "Morgan-Attachment-Warning.txt" attachment(s)
for more information.

But I often have to request the attachment with virus report.  I also
think if my users read the attachment text I would get fewer inquiries.

I would welcome a switch for all reports in the message body.

I suppose I could modify the inline text.

I search the FAQ and the list for the last year "virus report" looked in
the conf file too.  Seems like I deserve a flame for asking this but I
could not find previous posts.  Maybe I'm the only one with such
paranoid users.


Thanks

Scott Hancock
Morgan Construction Co




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