Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 15:09:32 -0800 (PST) From: Dave <mudman@R181172.resnet.ucsb.edu> To: Brandon Harper <lists-inet@booms.net> Cc: <freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: AntiVirus Replies [was: VIRUS IN YOUR MAIL] Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.33.0110291459130.16136-100000@R181172.resnet.ucsb.edu> In-Reply-To: <NHELLMIEFPEHAFGOIAGFAEKPDHAA.lists-inet@booms.net>
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> > it would be a good thing for somebody to be able to DoS a list by > > sending a little virus and firing off 250 autoresponders? > > [snip] > 2.) E-mail has very small performance hit. I won't really elaborate on this > one since its rather obvious. I've worked on some RedHat boxes that weren't > anything terribly special handling 100+ messages (both incoming and There is a performance hit that is latent that you are not looking at. Since most of us are computer people, we get into the habit of analyzing efficiency issues with *computers*. But what about all the human time spent deleting all those autoresponses? Although it was pointed out that not *everyone* is using auto-responders, if we assume the list was large enough that any given small percentage of subscribers have scanners, would could presumabably get the proverbial 250 auto-responders going off. (And if you just won't believe it, we may assume the virus sender may cc every list available on FreeBSD.org, from freebsd-questions to hardware to security. Many of us subscribe to more than one list, and presumably, some autoresponding machines as well) If you are lucky enough to not being using a GUI like a Yahoo! mail account, you can probably delete their mess pretty fast (esp in Pine). But then we have to ask ourselves, do we just want to hold down the delete-key for 250 seconds everytime some joker wants to drop a virus off to a list? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message
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