madbean

Get those idiots off my internet

28 Jan 2004
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Okay, tell me if you see what is wrong with this scenario:

• Alice's computer is infected with the Novarg (Mydoom) worm.
• Alice has some HTML on her computer that includes Bob's and Charlie's email addresses.
• Novarg finds those addresses, and send itself to Bob, but uses Charlie's address in the From: field. That is, the From: address is spoofed.
• The oh-so-smart people at Bob's company have installed anti-virus filters on their email system.
• These filters detect the Novarg virus in the email sent from Alice's computer (which appears to be from Charlie).
• It is well known that the Novarg virus spoofs the From: address.
• These filters send a 'bounce' email back to the spoofed sender telling them the email they just sent contained Novarg.
• Charlie gets this stupid bounce message (infact, he eventually gets hundreds of them); not just because Alice has a virus, but because of the stupid email filters at Bob's company.

Now, listen up all you oh-so-smart email administrators, and all you oh-so-smart anti-virus programmers. GET OFF MY INTERNET!