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Anti-Virus Companies: Tenacious Spammers 329

Posted by CmdrTaco from the more-bounces-than-worms-in-my-inbox dept.
jaroslav writes "There is a great article over at Attrition about the problem of anti-virus related spam. I don't know if we should all start reporting this to the government, but telling the companies themselves that this should stop might get some results."
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Anti-Virus Companies: Tenacious Spammers More

Anti-Virus Companies: Tenacious Spammers

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  • A good analogy... (Score:5, Informative)

    by calebb ( 685461 ) * on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:25PM (#8126441) Homepage Journal
    A lot of clients in my department regularly ask me if they have a virus when they receive these mail gateway auto-replies. I came up with a good analogy that helps even the most technophobic user understand what's going on:

    If I send a letter to George Bush using Saddam Hussein for the return address, the president will not believe that the letter is really from Iraq! Why? (other than Saddam being captured?) The postmark on the envelope will say Pullman, Wa!

    Similarly, if the mail server looked at the address that actually sent the virus, it would see something like aol.com or texas-telecom.net. Instead, these mail servers just blindly believe that the virus was really sent from Client-A@wsu.edu. (I insert the client's actual email address here... that helps grab their attention if their mind was already wandering...)

    • Re:A good analogy... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by vDiver ( 62458 )
      Sadly, I must admit that my companies original virus notification systems sent mail to the sender and receiver whenever it detected a virus. This seemed really cool for awhile, but with the growing trend for spoofed addresses and extremely heavy 'dumps' of mail...

      Anyway, we turned it off. A local administrator still gets to know about it, but that's the only place it goes now, and I think the world is a better place for it.

    • Re:A good analogy... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Leme ( 303299 ) <(jboyce) (at) (ci.redding.ca.us)> on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:36PM (#8126565)
      I don't get it. Are you saying Saddam sent this virus?

    • Re:A good analogy... (Score:5, Funny)

      by ShootThemLater ( 5074 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:09PM (#8126992)
      If I send a letter to George Bush using Saddam Hussein for the return address, the president will not believe that the letter is really from Iraq! Why? (other than Saddam being captured?) The postmark on the envelope will say Pullman, Wa!

      Good analogy, but I think you seriously overestimate Dubya's powers of reasoning in this case...

    • Draft an RFC? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nocomment ( 239368 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:24PM (#8127182) Homepage Journal
      I wonder if we (as a community) should draft an RFC that governs such things as naming conventions and the like. perhaps define all types of viruses give them a designation as to what platform and what they do. The names would sort of be a mixture of all the major vendors.

      Something like

      $PLATFORM/$VIRUS.$VERSION@$PAYLOAD-STYLE So you'd need a simpl draft coming up with a platform name Win32 for 32-bit windows Mac for mac's yadda yadda, a Virus naming convention so that everyone would be able to tell from looking at the virus as to what it's name should be, $version .A .B .C etc, and a convention for payload style. Mydoom was a mass mailer that also was meant for use in a DDOS.
      So perhaps mydoom should be
      Win32/Mydoom.A@MM@DD
      -or-
      Win32/Happy99.a@M

      just thoughts and ideas, what's everyone else think?

      As well as defining in the RFC that, if a worm is known to spoof the From: field then skip the auto-reponder notice altogether.

    • Re:A good analogy... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by thedillybar ( 677116 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:26PM (#8127207)
      And tell your friendly sysadmins that if they would adopt SPF [pobox.com] (Sender Permitted From), mentioned on Slashdot quite [slashdot.org] a few [slashdot.org] times [slashdot.org] now [slashdot.org], that we would no longer have the problem of From addresses not patching the "postmark."

    • Re:A bad analogy... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by schon ( 31600 )
      Your analogy is flawed.

      If I send a letter to George Bush using Saddam Hussein for the return address, the president will not believe that the letter is really from Iraq!

      Why would it have to be from Iraq? You just said that the sender was Saddam Hussein, not Iraq. You're mixing up the sender and the origin. Mr Hussein may not have been to WA, but if you mailed the message from (say) Yemen, Saudi Arabia, how would Mr. Bush be able to tell that wasn't from Saddam, just by looking at the postmark?

      The p

  • Anti-virus! (Score:3, Funny)

    by cyberfunk2 ( 656339 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:27PM (#8126465)
    Dont you see ? This 'spam' is just the anti-virii companies conditioning the users to ignore the MyDoom and other such varients! Previously at NAI Marketing: Look , Look ! We can put a good spin on it !

  • Slashdot Plagiarized Again (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mr. Darl McBride ( 704524 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:27PM (#8126473)
    You read it on Slashdot first [slashdot.org], two days ago. That's right, Darl called these spammers for what they are, right here on Slash.

    Not three hours after this comment, someone mailed this to Declan's Politech list, a cheat sheet for computer illeterate journalists angling for something to stay more relevant than the typewriters they still swear by. And then the very next day, we see three different articles with variations on this very topic. Five bucks says the next issue of eWeek borrows in their next issue as well.

    Yes, as always, none of the stories credited Politech, though the names of the authors who borrow liberally are always the same. And Politech didn't credit Slashdot, where the Politech submitters borrow a full half of their stories with equal disregard for journalistic integrity. Indeed, the only time Politech credits Slashdot is when they believe Slash has said something stupid. These reporters are hooked on the easy source of stories, yet trash it publicly for fear others will find the tool that's kept them from having to do actual reporting anymore.

    I may be here to take Linux away from you, but you can't argue that I don't give something back. You hate me. But you love me too, and you hate that as well. Think of it, you see me just the way others see Slashdot.

    If you'd like to track Politech's ongoing plagiarism of Slashdot, jump on their free mailing list [politechbot.com] and have a laugh. Watch the submissions. Watch each story jump from Slash to Politech (search the comments after each new Politech post and you'll find the original +4 or +5 comment 4 times in 5), then check the NY Times, Barron's, and Ziff Davis Publishing for the same authors publishing borrowed stories the very next issue. They do it like clockwork, because these "tech" journalists don't realize that we're on the internet too.

    ~Darl

    • Re:Slashdot Plagiarized Again (Score:5, Insightful)

      by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:53PM (#8126787) Homepage Journal
      Darl-ing,

      Clearly you don't realize that Slashdot doesn't post original material either. Indeed it's a regular question why /. doesn't simply cut a deal with PBS and reprint Cringely's columns honestly instead of noting nearly each one and then having some schmoe "helpfully" copy it for 'em. Same for almost everything else, by the time it hits /. it's old news in other circles.

      That journalists (including Usenet posters, bloggers, bbs users, other online discussion forums plus talk show producers and newsdesk editors) get many of their ideas from their peers is hardly new. That the process is becoming more widely transparent only speaks to the increasing breadth and depth of information resources available to more and more people.

      Indeed this is what the Google News service relies on - clusters of stories on topics. Those stories aren't always about "breaking news", quite often they're simply topics that have suddenly become widely discussed: Successful Memes.

      So yes, if one reads a number of news sources, particularly ones focused on specific topics, one will indeed often note a topic begin in one place, jumps from source to source, evolve, and oftentimes come full circle. Furthermore if one back-tracks a story it rarely "began" where most of us first became aware of it but had already bubbled up through several layers of reportage.

      Welcome to the Global Village where what was old is new again.

    • Seems to me how most of the news industry works these days. What with the amount of self-censorship and 'sensitivity' to the mainstream IT tech industry that advertises in their pubs, you pretty much have to wait for somebody off the beaten track to say something critical, and then it must only be quoted or aped at arms length by a tech journalist.

      You know the style. When tech journals quote press releases, there are hardly ever any qualifiers. But when its an up-stream critique of potentially successful c

  • grrr... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by firstadopter.com ( 745257 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:28PM (#8126480) Homepage
    I totally agree, they AV co's need to shape up their act. It's a weird situation, do they really want to be THAT effective to really stop viruses, or will they be like Chinese on piracy and put up a show.

    • Re:grrr... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Haeleth ( 414428 )
      It's a weird situation, do they really want to be THAT effective to really stop viruses, or will they be like Chinese on piracy and put up a show.

      The Chinese have always been very tough on piracy. In fact, back in the sixteenth century there was such a problem with Japanese pirates in particular that it was illegal for a Japanese to set foot in China on pain of death. Even the RIAA hasn't started advocating the death penalty yet, despite several ships carrying CDs having been boarded, their cargo stolen
    • do they really want to be THAT effective to really stop viruses

      Companies are here to make money. If they think marginal benefit will exceed marginal cost, they'll do it. That's exactly what these AV companies are doing.

      Until someone sets a precedent to show that activities like this will end up hurting you, everyone will (and SHOULD) keep doing it.

      That's the nature of capitalism and I, for one, think the system works very well.

  • At my last job at a public uni, obviously any and all worms and viruses slammed us hard. It was soon apparent to make support calls more mangeable as well as the lessen the pure amount of crap on the network that we had to configure our mail server virus package to send those announcement "you have or were sent an infection" messages to /dev/null. Some users might not get the warning they needed I suppose but quickly one message would turn into thousands just for one infected user. To the bit bucket with them! It helps.

    • Re:configuration of the virus announcement functio (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dave3138 ( 528919 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:33PM (#8126533)
      No kidding. I used to pass the emails along to the end users. Not any more. After this last worm (MyDoom), I became fed up with having to explain to the users why they were receiving the emails. As the parent poster did, I just throw them away. Problem solved. As for the people who allow their AV gateways to send back auto responses, they should be shot. Every time I receive one of those emails from postmaster@somewhere, I fire back a nasty email tell them to cut it out.
      • You send them an email? That puts even more load on your server and in a way continues the problem. I too became fed up of this crap with MyDoom after bearing the brunt last time, but my approach is to block all mail from the idiots that bounce the payload as well with a hard SMTP reject on connect. Domain and IP both go into the block list and instead you just get a curt SMTP error message and we're done.

        Maybe I'll removed the blocks when this blows over, maybe I won't, but they sure as hell are going

  • Simple solution to problem (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:29PM (#8126489)
    Steps to stop viruses:
    1) At the end of every one of these viruses, just add fdisk. 2) Very quickly, there will be no more unprotected computers!
    3) ???
    4) Profit by shorting MSFT!

    • Re:Simple solution to problem (Score:4, Insightful)

      by macshit ( 157376 ) <[snogglethorpe] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday January 29, 2004 @05:38PM (#8128765) Homepage
      1) At the end of every one of these viruses, just add fdisk.

      Now that would be funny!

      I can just imagine the fresh, clean feeling the world would have for a short time afterwards...

      [I hate viruses not just because of all the stupid AV marketing spam that results, but because my company (like many I suppose) is obsessed with anti-virus crap. I have windows on a few machines at work, which are never ever used for anything except local debugging, but none-the-less I'm required to run four anti-virus programs on them simultaneously, which sit there and thrash the disk for an hour at ever bootup, and my manager is constantly coming and nattering at me "did you check your anti-virus for updates today"; I get the feeling he's a big victim....]

  • Non-reply is not quite right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HiKarma ( 531392 ) * on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:30PM (#8126512)
    I am also quite bothered by these virus blocker programs mailing the from line when they know it is fake.

    However, the truth is they know what sort of virus they have detected, and they can know whether the virus/worm in question forges the fromline or not. If they know it forges the from line, they should not send the mail back. If they know the program does NOT forge the from line, however, it is not unreasonable to send back the bounce, though for best appearances, it should not look like an ad.

    If a program on my machine is sending out worms, I want to know about it. The antivirus software should be able to tell the difference.
    • It's all just configuration. There's a simply checkbox that I uncheck so that the supposed sender isn't notified of the infected message. Too bad the AV software doesn't strip the initial sender's mail domain from the message header and automatically send an alert to abuse@whatever.com, postmaster@whatever.com, et. al. At least the headers should be real.

      Of course a lot of spam comes through 0wn3d boxes which are acting as drones so most of these headers point to individual boxes which are clueless of thei

  • But isnt a lot of spam... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ewhenn ( 647989 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:32PM (#8126529)
    But isn't a lot of spam generated by "lead companies".. For example, in those mortgage spams you get, the spamming company gets paid for leads to possible mortgages, not for the actual spam itself. They "lead" company is simply using spam as a method to solicit leads. Is the same applied to AV software? Sell the AV company a lead, get X% of the profit?

    • Re:But isnt a lot of spam... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Cali Thalen ( 627449 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:49PM (#8126741) Homepage
      This is something that's always concerned me when we talk about boycotting companies that advertise with spam...it's completely reasonable to believe that someone in an affilliate program is sending out millions of emails (which you can do for free if you try)in the hopes of pulling down some easy commissions.

      I'm not sure what it would take to deal with this though...the company would have to be willing to cooperate for certain, and you'd have to set up some sort of sting if the spammer was at all capable of covering his tracks (have someone go through with a purchase to the point where the affiliate information was made visible)

      • I ran into this. Received a spam from ?? advertising insurance brokering.

        The most objectionable thing was that the spammer had forged the return address to reference MY domain. Possibly I was going to be flooded with people screaming "Stop it!".

        I was upset. I went to the referenced web site, to see if I could track down the owner. No such luck; the web site ONLY permitted sales. I then created a dummy sales request, with a return to a throw-away hotmail email. Sure enough, I had a quotation several minute
  • I can't believe that those working at the anti-virus companies are so stupid so as to have not yet realised that by sending out all of these fallacious "OMG YOU GOT SPAM" hype emails - to the wrong people of all things - just sucks up twice, thrice, a dozen times the bandwidth of the original worm. Yes, worms are a bad thing, but sending out random hysterical emails about it to all and sundry doesn't help one tiny bit.

    • Re:I totally agree. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Abm0raz ( 668337 )
      sucks up twice, thrice, a dozen times the bandwidth of the original worm

      Nice to talk out your ass. yes they are annoying, but lets go over some numbers from my system I run:

      I run a MailMarshal 5.5 system. It is configured to block all executable attachments. A blocked attachment is parked for 7 days and a text only notification without attaching the original message is sent back to the "sender". If the sender replies according to the instructions (which is to add 1 randomly generated 6 letter wor

  • Complain to the abuse@ of the filtering system (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tsu Dho Nimh ( 663417 ) <abacaxi&hotmail,com> on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:36PM (#8126563)
    I use SpamBouncer ... the developer kindly provided filters to block these inane "you are infected" messages.

    Occasionally I will send a nastygram to the support or abuse department of the system using the stupid virus protection. Usually they can't figure out why I'm annoyed that they told me I'm infected with a virus ... the concept that a virus can forge a FROM escapes their air-filled heads.

  • How long... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tttonyyy ( 726776 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:36PM (#8126564) Homepage Journal
    ...before SCO relocates to Nigeria?

    "Dear friend,

    I am Darl McBride, a well known businessman..."

    Might be more fruitful for them. :)

  • Stupid admins cause this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stevenbdjr ( 539653 ) <steven@mrchuckles.net> on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:37PM (#8126590) Homepage

    The author of this article seems to think that the AV companies are the one to blame for this. In fact, every AV product I've ever worked with at the mail server level has allowed you to turn this functionality off. Any decent mail server admin should be doing this themselves. It's the same kind of ignorance and stupidity that allows 3 year old exploits to continue to propagate.

    • No excuse - this "feature" should be turned OFF by default. Heck, it should not exist in the first place.

    • Yes, but is it off by default? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by enosys ( 705759 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:49PM (#8126742) Homepage
      Certainly whoever sets up a server and leaves this enabled is stupid or careless, but I think the companies have some responsibility too. The option should at least be disabled by default. Enabling it should cause some sort of warning. Better yet it shouldn't be there. Why put such a dangerous feature in a program?

      • Re:Yes, but is it off by default? (Score:4, Informative)

        by stevenbdjr ( 539653 ) <steven@mrchuckles.net> on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:58PM (#8126850) Homepage
        The option should at least be disabled by default.

        It is with most newer versions of products (Trend, Sophos, Sybari, to name a few). Older versions had this on by default, but when they were released, viruses weren't forging FROM headers the way they are now. Additionally, when upgrading versions, the old settings tend to get preserved, thus perpetuating the problem.

        I also wouldn't go so far as to call this a dangerous feature. It was designed to be a useful tool to help STOP the spread of viruses. I think a better compromise would be to enable notification back to the sender only if the detected virus is know NOT to be a FROM forger, with the option to disable it completely.

      • Why put such a dangerous feature in a program?

        Because when the apps were first created we did not have a SPAM problem.

        So a legitimate email might have contained a virus and it was good Internet community help to inform the sender about the virus.

        Now we have viruses and SPAM which feed off each other and the feature becomes a pain.

    • Re:Stupid admins cause this (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:59PM (#8126861) Homepage Journal
      oh well, but there's just this little bit of information that they have and are not using at all: THE VIRUS SCANNERS DATABASE HAS THE INFORMATION THAT IT FORGES THE ADDRESS, so it would need very little work to code it so that it didn't send the notification when it could deduce that the sender is forged.

      of course, free advertising at the peaks of virus activity can't hurt?
    • I receive hundreds of these warnings, thanks to being a developer whose mail address is all over the place. I got fed up with these bogus warnings today, so I decided to try to talk to one of the many organizations sending me these virus "warnings". I called the mail admin and the help desk operator of Saxion University [saxion.nl] and tried to explain to them that these messages are useless. It was a sad discussion.

      Yes, they know that the virus is faking the sender's address.

      Yes, they know that I am not the sender o
      • Call them back. Record the call.
        After they're done explaining that they won't do anything, inform them that they are now knowingly sending you unsolicited spam, and ask where you should fax the invoice, as you will be billing them for each unsolicited email that you receive.

        Do it as a bluff, or do it with the intent to bill. If you have them on tape saying they know they're bombing innocent third parties with email, they're going to change their ways pretty quickly. Newspapers love that shit :)
    • For some reason, executives get mad when they realize that customers are not being responded to, even when they send us a virus. It's the same thing as saying "Oh, we got your email alright. We just don't care about you...".

      It might be some sort of legal accountability thing too. Imagine a conversation like this:

      Customer: "I sent that proposal 10 minutes before the deadline. Did you get it?"

      Employee: "Uh, no."

      Customer: "Well, I have proof that I sent it, I'm going to sue you for a million dollars!"

      Empl
  • Who makes money out of viruses ?

    Who makes money out of spam-blocking software ?

    (I'll leave the answers as exercices to the readers)

    J.

  • Eh? You sure...?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by DroopyStonx ( 683090 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:44PM (#8126672)
    "If I send a letter to George Bush using Saddam Hussein for the return address, the president will not believe that the letter is really from Iraq!"

    You sure about that?

  • I have experienced this in the worst possible way (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NotAnotherReboot ( 262125 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:45PM (#8126685)
    When Blaster was going around, I decided I wanted a new email alias on my campus's email system. I chose just my first name, and to my surprise, it gave it to me.

    As soon as it was set up, I started getting 50-100 messages from other servers saying that my address was spewing out viruses. Of course, this is impossible, seeing as my computer never even knew that I had this alias. Yet, I kept getting it time and time again.

    The problem was, I couldn't delete the alias, and I ended up with hundreds of these messages per day. Incredibly frustrating. They must know that it serves no purpose.

  • Why does the government need to be involved??? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dubdays ( 410710 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:45PM (#8126689)
    Why don't we all just turn this "feature" of replying to the virus-laden email off? I do the administration of our anti-virus software on the network (Symantec Corporate Ed.), and I just turn that crap off...it's a very simple thing to do. I can't speak for the other anti-virus software, but I would assume you could also turn off email replies in them as well. We ought to be bitching to the network admins, and not to the government.
  • I get mad when they send me back a "copy" of the original e-mail + virus.

    A copy of the original e-mail is included. email.txt 153KB

    My throw-away account on Yahoo is always full with "Delivery Failed" 153KB and I have to keep clearing it out every 2 days or it becomes useless for doing it's designed job. Being my spam trap for websites that require my e-mail.
    • Even better, when the worm forges your mail address on some idiots messages, and then an AV gateway sends the forged message back to you with a copy of the virus. Checked my own Yahoo account again after seeing your message, and found at least 7 mails like that.

      Also, lots of spam mails with one real sentence, and then a paragraph or two of random English words at the bottom...Something new to defeat filtering?
  • one of his complaints is the disparaged naming of the same virus by different anti-virus companies. I tend to agree it is annoying, but if the anti-virus companies want to be reactive and come up with a fix as soon as possible, they need to come up with a name for it quickly so they can reference it, and they don't always know if it's the same virus that another company is hyping up or not.

    anyone know how they come up with these names? sounds like a fun job, anti-virus virus namer.

  • This is the reason why I never do so with software products.

    Unfortunatly McAffee requires registration/drm product activation to use it. This means you are hosed and pisses me off.

    Of course I can always lie about my email address but my guess is before long they will require for you to recieve an email to use the product like many forums.

    Yuck.

    I wonder if Norton or I should now say Symantec is any better in regards to this.

    • Get AVG Antivirus and use a throw-away account like at Yahoo or Hotmail.

      Free antivirus, and none of hassles of getting marketing spam from McAfee.

    • Unfortunatly McAffee requires registration/drm product activation to use it. [snip] I wonder if Norton or I should now say Symantec is any better in regards to this.

      Nope. Just installed Norton on my dad's machine. Registration required, phone home to activate. Oh, and as of Norton 2003, it now installs a background process called "SYMLCSVC" that takes up a good chunk 'o RAM and serves no purpose other than some unspecified DRM scheme. The uninstaller won't remove it, or even stop it from running, ei

    • > Unfortunatly McAffee requires registration/drm product activation to use it.
      >
      > Of course I can always lie about my email address but my guess is before long
      > they will require for you to recieve an email to use the product like many forums.

      Answer #1: McAfee already requires the email for some features, eg manually initiated download of updates.

      Answer #2: Check out www.spamgourmet.com which is a very easy to use (and free) email forwarding service. You can have it forward eg the first 5 em

  • AV Companies Send These Emails Because... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by conan_albrecht ( 446296 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:48PM (#8126733)
    ..."It's Good For Marketing". In our eyes, the best AV product is one that sits quietly and takes care of email viruses silently, without adding to the mass email problem.

    However, in the eyes of an AV company, a silent, seamless program is the LAST thing they want. These companies want the PHB's to know their product is working, and they want visibility.

    This is a classic case of marketing desires winning over technological needs. This is the reason I use open source projects -- they (most of them, anyway) do their job without the need for advertising.

  • It's a tough call.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MadAnthony02 ( 626886 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:49PM (#8126746)

    I work at a helpdesk, so I've spent the last couple days repeating how from headers can be forged, ect, ect to users... so I agree with the frustration and do want it to stop.

    At the same time, if I unknowingly sent an important document that had a virus and was not recieved, I would want to know. Years ago I remember sending a resume that was infected with a word macro virus - I was glad that I got a bounceback message, since a)I knew I had a virus and b)I knew the place didn't get my resume.

    • >At the same time, if I unknowingly sent an important document that had a virus and was not recieved, I would want to know.

      Funny, I thought thats what anti-virus software was for. Look for the button that says "SCAN".

      Yes, I'm being glib, but it's true. Most anti-virus scanning software can be setup to scan outbound messages, so you'd only be left with a scenario where this feature is useful if you're defs arn't up to date or accurate, and theirs is. Thats a fairly convoluted scenario to justify the exi

      • My point is less about the sender knowing they have a virus, and more about the sender knowing their document wasn't recieved. Even once they find out they have a virus, the average user won't know that their document wasn't recieved. And there are a lot of people out there who don't have up to date virus software or don't bother updating it - think home users whose computer came with a 3 month subscription that expired two years ago.

    • At the same time, if I unknowingly sent an important document that had a virus and was not recieved, I would want to know.

      Read the article.

      Of course there are viruses such as Word-macro viruses that users unknowingly send out as an attachment.

      But the AV developers know that the particular viruses mentioned in the article fake the sending address of the mail. So the AV software should know that there is no need to send out a warning, since it already knows that the "sender" isn't the sender.

      This isn't e
  • That virus has generated an insane amount of traffic to my mail server, most of it is very ineffective due to the use of a few standard names. Where on a normal day I would get about 100 mails, where 90 of them were rejected spam, I got over 900 mail attempts today.

  • I've gotten AV email... (Score:4, Informative)

    by callipygian-showsyst ( 631222 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @02:51PM (#8126772) Homepage
    ...that sends "back" (though I never sent it in the first place) the actual VIRUS!

    If I had spare time, I'd SUE the AV companies! They're commiting LIBEL and they KNOWINGLY SENT ME A VIRUS!

    Anyway, I'd also like to add that I've run Microsoft Windows since the days of Windows 1.03 and I have NEVER had a virus. I don't take unusual precautions, either. I have a virus scanner that I keep updated and run MANUALLY every time I hear about a new one, and it never finds anything (except when I've purposely saved one off for analysis!). I've never been tempted to click on an .SCR .PIF or .EXE file, and since I run my PC behind a "linksys" box that blocks all incoming ports, I've never had Code Red or anything like that.

    One of the companies I'm working for just locks down the network harder and harder each time there's a new virus. For example, they did some tweak so when you log into the domain, some thing runs that prevents you from making a share (though only from the UI--you can still do it from the NET command-line.) I hope someone realizes that they've NEVER actually stopped a virus, even though each time one happens they run around in circles and restrict the network and PCs even more. You just can't prevent against people receiving an EXE in email and running it!

    Now I know the argument you get from Mac-crazies--that if the PC had better account management this wouldn't happen. NONSENSE! A user-level program with no special "root" access can easily scan through YOUR mailbox and pick of email addresses and send out email. ON ANY OPERATING SYSTEM, even a properly adminstered Un*x system.

    • "Now I know the argument you get from Mac-crazies--that if the PC had better account management this wouldn't happen. NONSENSE! A user-level program with no special "root" access can easily scan through YOUR mailbox and pick of email addresses and send out email. ON ANY OPERATING SYSTEM, even a properly adminstered Un*x system."

      Not a Mac-crazy, but how the hell do you figure this???

      A non-root account can't read any other users' mailboxes unless a system is set up incorrectly.
      • I said:

        A user-level program with no special "root" access can easily scan through YOUR mailbox and

        Maybe you are just a little crazy! You can read your OWN mailbox! And send out lots of emails. Another trick some viruses do is to scan through the web cache and email everything that looks like an email address. Again, something that can be done on a properly configured Un*x system.


    • I'd also like to add that I've run Microsoft Windows since the days of Windows 1.03 and I have NEVER had a virus.

      Being one of the most experienced Windows users in the world, I'm not surprised you never got a virus :)

    • Anyway, I'd also like to add that I've run Microsoft Windows since the days of Windows 1.03 and I have NEVER had a virus. I don't take unusual precautions, either. I have a virus scanner that I keep updated and run MANUALLY every time I hear about a new one, and it never finds anything (except when I've purposely saved one off for analysis!). I've never been tempted to click on an .SCR .PIF or .EXE file, and since I run my PC behind a "linksys" box that blocks all incoming ports, I've never had Code Red or

    • A "user-level" program can't run at all on a Unix system with /home mounted noexec.
  • A group of online (what else) hacker friends (not cracker) put together a load of information and evidence that greatly suggested a lot of the worms being generated are done directly, or bankrolled by the big name AntiVirus companies. There was even a link to a website of a major AV company that just about candidly admitted that there are thousands of viruses that exist only inside their "Virus Lab", and not outside of it. Perhaps it is all just Marketing Fluff (mimicking the Biomedical industry) or somet
    • OH! i forgot to ask...

      Anyone else subscribe to this conspiracy theory? Or seen/heard/read anything that supports or suggests this claim?

      just curious.

      sorry for being such a dork.

  • The real problem here is just that bad/infected e-mails get answered at all. Even if you would know a worm doesn't forge the "From:" line, you always have the chance that it's a mutation that does. So: why not simply throw away bad e-mails without comment?

    This is very similar to spoofed IP packets: a firewall might bounce (answer) the packet back to its origin, and if the original packet was broadcasted to a lot of systems, the fake return address gets bombarded with those bounced packets.

    The solution:

  • ...this is why they are called 'virii'.

    The logic used to illustrate the 'issue', according to Brian Martin, is in itself a definition of a 'virus'. Not an inditement of any one factor.

    "A harmful or corrupting agency; "bigotry is a virus that must not be allowed to spread"; "the virus of jealousy is latent in everyone"

    These virii depend on us as part of the equation...placing the blame on any single entity is just passing the buck, and not valid in terms of identifying a solution.
    • ...this is why they are called 'virii'.

      I didn't see any mention at all in the article of illiterate twits who think they understand Latin spelling rules and thus make up plurals for English words that aren't correct in English, and wouldn't even be correct in Latin.

  • I don't understand why the anti-virus vendors get all the criticism for including features that notify senders. Why not criticize the admins who install the software with the default settings and never configure it?

    All the products we use allow you to modify or disable the non-delivery reports or bounce messages, and we do. We've seen that routing all the bounce messages during a spam or virus outbreak degrades our server performance more than the spam or viruses. We notify our local users when we munge th

  • WEIRD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TwinkieStix ( 571736 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:11PM (#8127031) Homepage
    This is really weird. I've been on a campaign for the past day or so to the big myDoom "spammers". I've been sending out the following e-mail:

    As a mail administrator or antivirus company, you are probably well aware of the current trend in viruses to forge the senders address. Your system has been caught by our system, replying to these forged addresses to notify them that they sent a message containing a virus. This has been causing undue hysteria within my organization, and must stop immediately. In addition, this message was sent unsolicited and without prior business ties, and may be a violation of federal and/org state anti spam laws. Further messages will result in a permanent block on your SMTP server's ability to send mail to ours, and a submittal of your "replies" to several major spam blocking services and black hole lists.

     If enough of us do this, maybe these guys will get a clue to turn off the reply feature.
  • Many of the same companies that produce anti-virus software offer separately or as a bundle with the their A/V software anti-spam and anti-spyware products. If everyone only spent the extra money, and configured that nice [Norton AntiSpam/McAfee SpamKiller/whatever] software to reject such messages.

    If you build a better moustrap, it's good business to also sell smarter mice.

    Perhaps I'm too grumpy or cynical today.

  • I've always been suspicious of AV companies (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:16PM (#8127091)
    Let's face it, these people all have a vested interest in making sure that viruses are not eliminated.

    In the last Slashdot story about the Mydoom worm, a Computerworld article quoted the damning evidence directly from the horse's mouth:

    No one has yet reported an infection by Mydoom.B, said David Perry, global director of education at Cupertino, Calif.-based antivirus vendor Trend Micro Inc. "If 100 people in the world had been infected, we would know," he said. "In fact, almost all of the viruses that have ever been detected never infected anybody ever. We say that there are about 77,000 known viruses, but only about 900 of them have ever infected anyone."

    Huh? Pardon me? If they never infected anyone, then what makes them viruses? How were they detected if they never infected anyone - from the original first seeds by the viruswriters themselves? Then why in the hell haven't they tracked the virus writers down? Are these inventions of the AV companies that never existed outside of the AV companies' labs? Only 900 out of 77,000 ever infected anyone - isn't the virus problem then vastly overrated?

    Given the above statement and the quite legitimate complaint that started this thread in the first place, I really think everyone should question the AV companies' role in the virus situation.

  • Picking Nits... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by writermike ( 57327 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:20PM (#8127130)
    FWIW, one of the examples the author gives as a AV spam -- the one with the content "Mail Transaction Failed" -- is one of the mails MyDoom/Novarg sends out [sarc.com].

    But, in a way, the virus is spamming, too.

  • Big ol' steaming load (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:21PM (#8127141)
    Blaming the AV companies for the failure of the IT personnel of other organizations to evaluate and properly configure their mail gateway AV software seems like a load of crap to me.

    Besides, sending these e-mails arguably provides a positive service, because self-propagating e-mail viruses are everyone's problem, and a bit of vigilance on each person's part is required to prevent one of these viruses from becoming a worldwide problem.

    Using a shotgun approach to tell people that a virus is going around helps to inform everyone. Everyone needs to educate him- or herself about virus protection and prevention, so that they can personally know whether their machine could be infected or not.

    Also, telling those people to contact their local IT staff just gets the IT staff in gear to help stave off something they should have already been on the ball about. If the IT staff were prepared, then their company's employees would already be in-the-know, and would not harass IT with needless panicky e-mails.

    If, on the other hand, the software package sending the spam warnings provides links to their web page, then I'd lean toward considering it to be spam rather than information.

    • You mean links like these? Is this close enough to spam for you?

      * Vexira ALERT *
      This version of Vexira MailArmor is licensed and full featured.

      Vexira has detected the following in a mail from your address:

      Worm/MyDoom.A2 virus

      The mail was not delivered.

      Your computer may be infected with a virus! Please visit
      Central Command at http://www.centralcommand.com and obtain a copy
      of Vexira AntiVirus now.

  • Existing solutions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Syberghost ( 10557 ) <syberghost@@@syberghost...com> on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:24PM (#8127183)
    One discussion that's been going on is the creation of a DNSRBL for sites that do this.

    Perhaps, however, instead of reinventing the wheel, we could use existing solutions; send a virus-infected email to postmaster@ the offending domain, and/or abuse@ the offending domain.

    If you get a bounceback that makes it clear no human will see the message, that meets the criteria for submission to RFC-ignorant [rfc-ignorant.org]

  • stoopidity abounds (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cdn-programmer ( 468978 ) <terrNO@SPAMterralogic.net> on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:30PM (#8127258)
    There is no reason on earth that I can think of for an email system to run code received arbitraily from the web.

    personally I shut down these really bad ideas in 1997. Personally I received more than 100 copies of mydoom in the last few days.

    So it does appear many people who have legitimate reasons to put my email address in their contact lists have no idea how to be prudent about safe sex in cyberspace. This being said - I am optimistic they are learning.

  • It's the natural order of virus evolution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hellfire ( 86129 ) <deviladv AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:34PM (#8127304) Homepage
    I believe in a little axiom that says

    I'm only going by my experience in anti-virus software, but lets look at it this way:

    1) Anti-virus software is on the desktop machine to prevent infection

    2) Soon viruses are getting in via email. Anti-virus software writers decide to target the enterprise (where the real money is) and where it makes most logical sense to block viruses now.

    3) Some programmer comes up with the idea "Hey! Wouldn't it be great if our software automatically emailed the person who sent the virus in the first place? After all, its 1997 and the only way to get a virus is via a word or excel document attached to the email." The product development approved, not only because education is a huge tool in stopping viruses, but a little (I stress a little) free advertising couldn't hurt.

    4) Microsoft introduces new features and more sophisticated viruses are introduced.

    5) The option stays on and is set by default because no one re-evaluates it and its just that way.

    6) Some cracker gets an ingenious idea to use the feature against itself and cause more harm than good. The feature is exploited to send out thousands of emails per server, which the original designers never intended.

    7) Anti-virus writers don't pay attention because you can just turn it off and its not important to them any more. It's the admin's job to know to turn this off. They may tell some people, and they may default it to off in the next version, but its not high on the list.

    And even still, you can't just tell someone they are stupid for coding it this way or for not turning it off. Until recently, this option made "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."sense. Tell the infected user of their problem so cut down on the spread of virii. Now, as in the biological world, the virus writers figured out how to use a portion of the "immune system" against itself.

    It's just the way things happen. I write a virus, you write a counter measure, I write a way to get around it. What's missing here is an email illustrating that the intent of sending out all these emails was deliberate on the part of anti virus writers. The article is assuming intent for no other reason than to scare people. Again, "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."
    • Damnit... this is what my original post should have looked like (correction in Italics, somehow this got deleted when I meant to copy):

      I believe in a little axiom that says "Never attribute any action to malice when you can attribute it to stupidity or ignorance."

      I'm only going by my experience in anti-virus software, but lets look at it this way:

      1) Anti-virus software is on the desktop machine to prevent infection

      2) Soon viruses are getting in via email. Anti-virus software writers decide to target th

  • Where's My Plasma Rifle? (Score:5, Funny)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:43PM (#8127401) Homepage Journal
    Am I the only person who fantasizes about busting into the offices and homes where spammers do their work and violently trashing their equipment with giant magnets, squirt bottles of honey laced with iron filings, fire axes, and bolt cutters?

    And on the way out, pounding "I AM AN E-MAIL SPAMMER" signs on their front lawn?

    C'mon, admit it. That would feel really good.

    Stefan

  • MSN taking advantage of it's latest infection! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tsu Dho Nimh ( 663417 ) <abacaxi&hotmail,com> on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:44PM (#8127414)

    Just into my HotMail account ... One could assume that Microsoft has no reason to write secure code because it helps a subsidiary SELL services.
    Me ... I use Mozilla and Linux

    From : MSN
    Sent : Wednesday, January 28, 2004 5:00 PM
    To : munged
    Subject : Fight spammers with new MSN Premium

    Get more from your Internet experience with new MSN(R) Premium Internet Software. This all-in-one software works with your existing Internet access to give you persistent protection, advanced communication tools and much more! With MSN Premium, you can:

    • Thwart e-mail viruses and hackers with MSN Virus Guard* and Firewall* powered by McAfee(R) Security.
    • Reduce spam and pop-up ads with junk e-mail filters and a pop-up guard - both built on patented Microsoft(R) SmartScreen Technologies.
    • Store more e-mail messages with 25 MB of online storage, plus send attachments up to 10 MB in size.
    • Enjoy home finance and learning resources with MSN Money Plus and MSN Encarta(R) Premium.

    Limited time offer - 3 months FREE**

    * Separate download required.

    ** Promotional offers only available to new subscribers, in the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. After the trial period (if any), the then current price for your MSN plan will be automatically charged to your credit card until you cancel your account or select an alternative plan. You must agree to the MSN Subscription Agreement to access the service. A major credit card is required. MSN is available only for personal noncommercial use. Internet access service not provided; you must have existing Internet access service. No refunds on prepaid plans, unless cancelled within 30 days. For users of Windows(R) 98 or later operating systems only. Prices subject to change. Additional terms may apply. Offer valid until April 7, 2004.

    This special offer is being made available to select MSN Newsletter subscribers. Our relationship with you is very important. In the event that you wish to unsubscribe from future promotional e-mail or special offers from MSN, click here. Once your request is received, we will take prompt action to ensure you do not receive future promotional e-mail from us. By unsubscribing from promotional e-mail messages, you will not affect any newsletters you may have requested nor restrict important customer communications concerning your MSN services. If you have questions about MSN privacy policies, please click here to read our privacy statement. To provide feedback regarding this mailing, please send e-mail to CSmsncommunications@msn.com.

  • Another problem this causes: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wolrahnaes ( 632574 ) <sean AT seanharlow DOT info> on Thursday January 29, 2004 @03:45PM (#8127429) Homepage Journal
    In the article, the author mentioned a mail server bouncing a message to a bad address with the bounce containing the virus.

    What if the server recieving the bounce has one of these alerting virus scanners?

    Scenario:
    1. Virus sends message to non_existant_user@email.com, forging the from address of user123@free-email.com
    2. email.com server bounces the message because non_existant_user doesn't exist.
    3. free-email.com receives the (virus containing) bounce from email.com
    4. AV software bounces the email, sending the virus back to non_existant_user@email.com
    5. Goto 2

    Anyone else see a problem here?

  • logs show MyDoom activity (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Thursday January 29, 2004 @04:34PM (#8127966)
    A sampling of the increased wasted bandwidth and resources my system has dealt with in the last week:

    24-hour period, number of bounces

    Jan 22, 794
    Jan 23, 843
    Jan 24, 872
    Jan 25, 936
    Jan 26, 5472
    Jan 27, 19426
    Jan 28, 20468

    I've had more of an increase in AV Company spam than I have in propagation of the worm!

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