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"Ian P. Christian" wrote:
Matthew Browning wrote:Spoiler: Cambridge University college bans the use of MS Outlook as they are fed up of tidying up after it.Just though I would mention, we have about 500 computers (and countless users), all running outlook. Our total Klez infections to date, 0. The virus in theory is stopped by our primary mail server, if it's not stopped there, it should be stopped at the exchange server, and if it's not stopped there, it would be stopped by the client virus scanner.
My guess is the average University college can't stop people picking up mail from external servers and probably wouldn't want to, so server defences are irrelevant to initial infection. What about other viruses in Outlook? Most big sites get hit early, before new viruses are in the filters. Even if they get caught, support desks often get calls from concerned users with viruses in my experience. It was more of a problem with viruses that infected other documents, but I don't suppose Windows users have changed that much. I think Desktop scanners are the only meaningful defence, others can help, but you can never filter malicious code effectively till it is just about to be run. Academic/Research desktops tend to be a bit more diverse than corporate desktops in terms of number and type of applications, and approval mechanisms for applications aren't going to be in place. So I suspect it is probably far simpler to blacklist bad applications than try and lock everything down to the point where it is safe to run Outlook. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.