[Mimedefang] Re: Unsafe file types

[Lee Dilkie]

> > I'd like to voice another view altogether here.
>
> Courageous! :-)

thanks! I've hit a nerve.

>
> If I didn't block .exes, I wouldn't run a security risk -- we don't
> run Windows here at Roaring Penguin, after all.  On the other hand, I
> would have about 7 MB/day of virus droppings polluting my Inbox.  This

Perhaps. But if you run an anti-virus scanner on your inbound mail (I run
clamav), all 7MB/day would be presumably caught and discarded. The network
load won't improve just because you drop .exe's. But by only dropping real
viruses, you're not inconviencing your users or making them jump through
hoops to get their jobs done. Blocking documents is especially bad,
businesses run on them. Get a scanner that will scan for macro viruses.

> And once no-one runs Windows, then we won't need to block based on
> filename extensions.  However, the fact that Windows is ubiquitous
> basically forces admins to do stupid and unfriendly things like block
> extensions, pay money for virus-scanners, etc.

You must be young :) I don't think this is a MS issue at all. We would be
dealing with the same issues regardless of which OS we were all using.
Whatever is the biggest in the marketplace, is also the best target. And
what the general programming world has been caught flat-footed on is
programming in the face of a hostile enviroment. We're used to producing
products that work, have lots of features, are as open as possible to enable
interoperability. We're used to programming against user and system errors.
We're not used to programming against active attacks.

> stack of anti-Microsoft pamphlets.  If you think I'm anti-Microsoft,
> you should have read that little tirade. :-) There are a lot of
> frustrated sysadmins out there.

Yeah, there sure are. But also remember who the enemy is here. Don't forget
to lay a lot of blame on anti-social vandels who want nothing more than to
destroy stuff. If these crimes were treated with the same seriousness as
"physical" crimes maybe this wouldn't happen so often. Can you imagine the
police ignoring someone poisoning a town's water supply? Well, that's about
what an email worm is like (minus all the sick and dying people, of course).
Well, maybe that doesn't make sense.. sigh.

Now, as for the other comments regarding my original email. I certainly
understand the attitude that you have to lock things down tightly because
you're personally responsible for every desktop and the internel network in
general. But you have to understand that people have to get their jobs done.
No matter how tight you clamp down on your email, they will find ways to
transfer the documents and files they need to. {thinking back to the era
when there were no attachments on email and uuencode was the perfered method
of choice, perhaps we'll be there again}. But the trouble is, the more hoops
they jump through, the less productive they'll be.

Anyway, it looks like I'm alone here ;)

-lee