Simon Byrnand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> <offtopic rant>
>
> *SIGH*
>
> Why can't people get it right and make virus scanning systems that DON'T
> reply to mailing lists ? It seems pretty obvious that the people writing
> (these particular) email virus scanners havn't read or don't understand the
> SMTP RFC's at all.
Actually, replying based on From: alone is even dumber than that since:
1. From: is 100% forgeable. 2. Modern email viruses routinely forge From: headers using address book entries. 3. You know the IP of the connecting host. Why not use it?
This particular instance is a perfect example: a virus forged a mailing list address and the virus surely didn't come from spamassassin.org.
Yep...a virus scanner replying to viruses AT ALL is a bad idea, we turned that function off on our system more than a year ago when all the viruses that forged the reply address started comming out, our virus scanner only notifies the recipient since then....
I think you missed my point though, and that was we weren't seeing the virus scanners trying to reply to the *sender*, it was clear from the wording of the messages that they thought they were notifying the *recipient* and its also clear that they were just taking the To: address from the headers and assuming thats the recipient. (Rather than using the envelope recipient as our scanner does)
That is just *horribly horribly* broken and against just about every RFC I can think of....
(One reason I brought it up at all is to illustrate how broken the integration of SA into Communigate is in some installations which also rely on the in-message headers to deliver the message after scanning, and can end up working as a spam redirector/amplifier :)
Perhaps people should have to take an RFC 822/2822 drivers license test before being allowed to write any software that manipulates email ? ;-) Certainly before writing any kind of auto-reply type systems, since most people get them wrong...
Regards, Simon
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