A cautionary tale of Sophos and MS

[Peter Bates]

Hello all...

I arrived in this morning to assorted clamouring about
a lack of external email.

Looking closer, I could see that after the autoupdate of Sophos
on Saturday night just after midnight, the version was 'out of date'
so started throwing:

Feb  4 00:08:03 postbox MailScanner[11382]: SophosSAVI::ERROR:: The
main body of virus data is out of date (542)::
./AE3CA13F8E4.6C3F0/msg-11382-11.txt

End result was all our external (in/out) email over the weekend has
disappeared into the great bitbucket in the sky as this was then tagged
as a 'Silent virus' and not quarantined.

Entirely my fault for not updating Sophos for a couple of months, but
might be something worth considering to include in 'Allowed Sophos Error
Messages' if you're a Sophos user... that or still quarantine silent
viruses and clear the quarantine out from time to time.

Funny how these things catch you, even with 3 other AV engines!



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Peter Bates, Systems Support Officer, IT Services.
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Telephone:0207-958 8353 / Fax: 0207- 636 9838