[Samba] virus mailing

[Jay DeKing]

On Wednesday 01 January 2003 02:15 am, Jim Morris honored me with this 
communique:
> I agree with blocking attachments.
>
> The sad fact is that if you just ban a user email address that sent a
> virus to the mailing list, you may be banning an innocent person!
>
> I have been seeing a LOT of 'virus removal' messages directed towards
> my email address, saying that I sent an infected email to a person I
> never even heard of. The sad fact is, many of these Outlook based
> viruses forge the sender address using other addresses on the infected
> computer.  I have never used Outlook - all my email is read on either
> Linux or Mac OS X. I don't even use Windows based email clients - maybe
> Mozilla once in a blue moon....  those infected emails came from
> someone who may have once received mail from me, who DOES run a virus
> engine such as Outlook.....
>

Precisely the problem! The "Klez" virus variants pick a name from the address 
book of the infected user and apply that to the "from" field, so the actual 
originator is disguised.

Most of the many listservers I am subscribed to already ban attachments 
because too many viruses have been spread around accidentally. It is the 
easiest solution. Also, since I run Samba to allow Windows and Linux to get 
along, I only read this list (and most others) from my Linux box. 

Jay DeKing

Thought for the day: "Practice safe computing. Delete Outlook, install a 
firewall/router and use *nix."