Sober worm spreads like wildfire

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worms and mailers

"""That was I think the first UNIX worm that was using a remote debugging feature and the complete lack of any protection or authentication in the mailer. It self propagated itself and when it was discovered it was stopped. That was one of the last Unix worms"""

While I don't remember all the details, I do remember it acted by using all the memory on a machine and going from machine to machine until it had tied up the entire system. It was stopped when the system went down.


"""All these sillly stupid viruses compromise a users machine by the EASE by which foreign and untrusted code can be downloaded and let execute under ms windows. Then they usally scan the user's address book and make pretend emals with people in the address book appear to be the senders. It would be very simple for a mailer to get an explicit confirmation from the owner before starting mass emails with forged source address."""

First, to open a mail message, then open the attachment and then run the file is not as you say "EASE by which foreign and untrusted code can be downloaded and let execute under ms windows.". They are actions taken by the user and would happen no matter what OS was being used. Asking for confirmation before a "Mass mailing". this would work only if every mail program was set up for it. Also what would be considered a mass mailing?

As for checking which port was being called. Again all mail programs would have to do this. Even if MS did what you suggest (and I am not too sure if it could be done, but will leave it to programmers to say yes or no,) if they were the only ones, it still would not work like you say. Also is there only one port called for e-mail or can different ports be called?

Again I am not a programmer so do not know how easy or hard it might be to do this. So for all the programmers out there, can this be done? How would it work? and just how hard would it be to do it?

Posted by: richhayes   Posted on: 05/05/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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