Re: Why can't ISPs stop spam/virus ?!

From: Captain Dondo (yan_at_NsOeSiPnAeMr.com)
Date: 09/22/03 

Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 04:30:38 -0400

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 06:40:28 +0000, Ed Murphy wrote:

> But in the particular case of e-mail-borne viruses, don't the vast
> majority of the payloads still consist of attachments whose filename
> ends in .EXE, etc.? You can filter on *that*. I do, as of yesterday
> (when Swen finally pushed me to figure out fetchmail/procmail). Good
> ISPs should, or should offer options along those lines.

You've never acutally looked at the list of executable extensions that MS
uses, have you?

I tried to institute virs scanning on all possible downloads that could be
executed under windows. That lasted all of a day. Turns out that IE and
windows is so intricately tied in to downloaded executables that trying to
download them to a cache, scan them, and then forward them (we're talking
http here, not smtp) breaks many, many web pages.

Back to smtp - I have to let legitimate attachments/downloads through; we
regularly send/receive files of all sorts sorts of extensions, including
.exe, and sometimes exceeding 10MB.

-Dondo 

-- 
   o__ 
   ,>/'_        o__
  (_)\(_)       ,>/'_   o__
What am I on?  (_)\(_)  ,>/'_   o__     
I'm on my bike,        (_)\(_)  ,>/'_   o__
6 hours a day, busting my ass. (_)\(_)  ,>/'_
What are you on? --Lance Armstrong     (_)\(_)

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