[clug] Interesting MyDoom bounce

[Tim Potter]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 03:25:35PM +1100, Marek Samoc wrote:

> TP> Except for the fact that the sender address is forged and the unlucky
> TP> sender now gets a bounce message for a message they didn't send.
> TP>
> TP> A better approach is to just discard virus emails.
> 
> Yes, but it is not up to the receiving end to decide whether a message is
> to be discarded. The receiving end of an SMTP transaction just provides a
> 5xx error. It is up to the sending machine to bounce the message back or
> to drop it on the floor.

Unfortunately being technically correct in this situation just makes
the problem worse.  As Martin said there is no situation where an error
given back to the user gives any useful information and most (all?)
mailers will just pass the bounce back to the hapless forgee.


Tim.