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Re: [LUG] mod_age and academic list hit by virus in race period



Whilst I'm curious to know what the virus problem your referring
to at JISC was I would suggest that the solution is not to try
and mangle attachments and hold stuff till viruses are found.

Viruses that rely on mail client bugs to misinterpret what is
otherwise a legitimately formatted email. Many OE viruses only
look like attachments to O/OE users. Face it OE sucks, we
shouldn't nobble everyone elses fun because a few people fail to
get a decent mail client, it isn't as though there aren't free
mail clients available.

As regards Word documents, are viruses still a problem? (You can
tell I've been doing *nix for too long) I thought this was
largely killed with the release of Word 97. I know a few
weaknesses have been found since in Office's defences, but I've
only seen the over spill of OE and IIS viruses from M$.

I think for this group worms that spread by FTP should be the
big worry. I still see a significant amount of scanning for port
21, and everything points to this being mainly a Linux problem.

I think you might have more luck if you sell it as replacing
attachments with a URL, and keep them on the server for a set
period. Many mailing list admins would like that - aside from
any virus problems it will shrink bandwidth usage on big lists
(It still breaks any attempt to sign messages of course), whilst
allowing people to get the attachment if they want it.

Simon

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