Re: Spam or Virus mails from Redhat ?

From: Andrew Konosky (TerranAce007_at_comcast.net)
Date: 07/16/04

  • Next message: Michael Schwendt: "Re: FC2 location of GPG keys" 
    Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 09:21:39 -0500
To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list@redhat.com>

    Scot L. Harris wrote:

    >On Fri, 2004-07-16 at 04:03, Parameshwara Bhat wrote:
    >
    >
    >>Hello list,
    >>
    >>This week I have been receiving numerous mails from ***@[***]redhat.com
    >>all 174 or 173 KB and with chinese looking junk characters in the body and
    >>either a zip or pif attachment. I haven't clicked on the attachemnt though
    >>I presume these cannot run on my Fedora box.
    >>
    >>I also receive similar mails from various other sites as well all similar
    >>in body and attachment. Where could this be coming from ?
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >
    >You would need to examine the headers of the mail messages to see where
    >they came from. However, a lot of the information in the header can be
    >falsified in order to obscure the sender. Most likely the messages came
    >from a windows box that has been taken over and is now a zombie running
    >mass mailings of spam. The from information is almost guaranteed to be
    >bogus.
    >
    >Ultimately it really does not matter where the messages came from. The
    >best thing to do is use a tool to filter them out.
    >
    >
    >
    >>Does anybody know of a mail-client which can be taught not to download
    >>suspicious looking mails ?
    >>
    >>Parameshwara Bhat
    >>
    >>
    >
    >I think firefox and the newer mozilla (for windows at least) has built
    >in spam filtering. Not sure if that is built in to the Linux version or
    >not.
    >
    >You can implement spamassassin on your linux box to filter spam. On my
    >home account I get about 150 or 200 spam messages a week. Only 3 or 4 a
    >week end up in my inbox. Depending on the client you use and how you
    >get your email you can configure spamassassin a couple of different
    >ways. The easiest, and the one I used at home, was to configure a
    >filter in my email client to call spamassassin on messages I download.
    >The filter then looks at the results and if it is marked as spam it gets
    >dumped in a holding folder. This gives you a chance to review the spam
    >messages for any false positives. What is neat with spamassassin is
    >that you can setup a bayesian database which will learn what you call
    >spam and ham. So over time it gets better and better at sorting things
    >out for your particular email.
    >
    >Check out their web site and the documentation that comes with
    >spamassassin. Highly recommended.
    >
    >If you are running a full blown mta then I recommend implementing
    >greylisting as well as spamassassin.
    >
    >
    >
    >

    I got junk like that all the time in Windows, so I started using the
    Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail program, which has built-in jumk mail
    filters. Now I use it under Linux as well. Works pretty good! And the
    nice thing about any non-windows system is that you really don't have to
    worry about viruses, because there are very few, if any that can affect
    you. 99% of computer viruses are written to attack
    technology-challenged, computer-illiterate windows users....

    The only reason I still have windows on my system is because most of my
    games won't work in wine, and I can't get my printer working. I'm in the
    process of *trying* to write a driver for it, but.... 

    -- 
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