rant about anti-virus and spam, MS flamed

[Matt Kettler]

At 05:00 PM 1/28/2004, Jeff A. Earickson wrote:
>Gang,
>
>See:
>
>http://www.attrition.org/security/rant/av-spammers.html
>
>MailScanner is torched about halfway down, along with
>every other anti-virus thingee out there.  The guy has
>a half a point.  As well as retiring the bounce option
>maybe Julian should consider making the "Silent Virus"
>the only option in the next MS.
>
>(rant found by way of www.fark.com, the best "news"
>source on the Internet).


If nothing else, you should walk away from that article realizing that it
is an absolute shame that MailScanner even has the feature at all. Default
disabled or not, it's a bad idea.

It's like having a rifle option on a can opener... Why would you ever have
such a dangerous mis-feature which could injure the operator and
bystanders? Just because some crazy lunatic wants to be able to open one
can and shoot a hole through another at the same time doesn't mean it's a
good idea to manufacture such a product. Others who need can openers might
play with it without knowing what it does.

Sure, some under-educated system admins might want this feature, but let's
face it, they only want it because they are completely clueless about the
implications. It's _ALWAYS_ a bad idea to notify senders of a real virus
infection in email, without exception.