[plug] Bugbear/B

Craig Ringer craig at postnewspapers.com.au
Tue Jun 10 14:20:59 WST 2003


> a)  Not having an updated system
> b)  Not having up-to-date (or perhaps any) anti-virus

probably the most important:
c) using MS Outlook (/Express), esp. older versions
d) Poorly educated/Stupid: opened bait attachments

I just had a user ask me today, saying they got a virus warning 
broadcast from a friend to all users in their address book (*sigh*). The 
typical "I got a virus, sorry I mailed it to you all accidentally". 
Spent the next 20 minutes reassuring him that since he didn't download 
and run the attachment, the virus couldn't infect his home PC over his 
browser from his webmail account... and that his LTSP workstation at 
work wouldn't care even if he did try to run the virus :-)

Sometimes, I think that reassuring the users after they get panicmail 
wastes vastly more time than dealing with the viruses themselves. After 
all, a simple exim filter now cuts out 99.9% of viruses here (the other 
0.1% being Office macro viruses, which the internal mail server 
catches). Gotta love being able to say "it might be a windows 
executable, so we'll just delete it."

I bet WestNet wish they could do something that drastic :-P

Craig




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