Klarinet Archive - Posting 000237.txt from 2004/03

From: "David C Kumpf" <dkumpf@------.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Viruses and their ilk
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 12:33:54 -0500

Erik Thal wrote:
> Jeremy A Schiffer wrote:
>
> >[...]
> >These two FREE products, when properly deployed, will do
> more to protect
> >you than anything else.
> >
> ------------------------------
>
> However, free software is often a mechanism used to install
> spyware and
> viruses on your system (trojan horse method). What better way
> to do this
> then via software that purports to potect you from such problems. You
> have little or no recourse against the developers of free
> software if it
> turns out to be malicious.
>
> Erik

Agreed...but most of the ones you need to worry about are advertised to you
via spam or questionable web pages. I took a quick look at the products
Jeremy mentioned and seriously doubt that such a problem exists for those.
The bigger problem for those products is that the person who needs them
either needs to have direct install access to their mail server (and be
running on a UNIX-based server, from what I can see in a quick scan) as well
as the knowledge needed to do the install; OR be able to convince the
sysadmin that they ought to seriously consider installing the product.

As it is, I will need to do something soon on our own mail server, so I'm
glad that Jeremy passed along the info. We currently run several blacklist
services, which cut our spam volume by about 3/4; but we need to get rid of
the remainder.

Dave Kumpf
dkumpf@------.com