-
Join the MyBroadband community
South Africa’s biggest forum. Discuss, discover, and connect with thousands of members.
-
Question of the Day: How impressed have you been with the 2026 Amazon Prime Day deals?
New Breed Telkom Virus Scanner
- Thread starter vansaware
- Start date
mancombseepgood
Executive Member
And you don't have a virus?
Sorry - had to ask the obvious
Sorry - had to ask the obvious
No unless...
.. there's a new virus that is less than 8 bytes long and can be transmitted via an interactive telnet session. Try...
telnet smtp.saix.net 25
220 ....
helo test
220 ....
mail from:<[email protected]>
220 ...
rcpt to:<[email protected]>
220 ....
data
34x .....
Subject: Hi
hello world
.
550 Possible virus....
Ron
.. there's a new virus that is less than 8 bytes long and can be transmitted via an interactive telnet session. Try...
telnet smtp.saix.net 25
220 ....
helo test
220 ....
mail from:<[email protected]>
220 ...
rcpt to:<[email protected]>
220 ....
data
34x .....
Subject: Hi
hello world
.
550 Possible virus....
Ron
Karnaugh
Banned
Uh, thats pretty common - the subject should be a summary of content in a sense, using "Hi" in the subject line is deprecated *everywhere* because alot of viruses use this.
It still pathetically wrong
Rejecting the message because you said "Hi" in the subject line is wrong. Imagine if Cell-C or MTN disconected you if you answered your cellphone with "Yebo".
I'm making a big fuss about this because its costing people money. I have heard of more than one person that has taken thier PC in to be scanned for a virus because of this. Remember that most users are not compter experts.
> Here's the bill sir, R195.
< Did I have a virus?
> No you dumb f&*k, you said "Hi" in the subject line.
I wonder how many ISPs in the country have had time and money wasted because of this. Will Telkom mind producing an acceptable vocabulary for sending email?
Ron
--------
telnet smtp.saix.net 25
Trying 196.25.240.94...
Connected to smtp.saix.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 ctb-mesg7.saix.net ESMTP Postfix
helo test
250 ctb-mesg7.saix.net
mail from:<[email protected]>
250 Ok
rcpt to:<[email protected]>
250 Ok
data
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
Subject: Hi
Test message
.
550 Error: 550 Potential Virus infection
quit
221 Bye
Rejecting the message because you said "Hi" in the subject line is wrong. Imagine if Cell-C or MTN disconected you if you answered your cellphone with "Yebo".
I'm making a big fuss about this because its costing people money. I have heard of more than one person that has taken thier PC in to be scanned for a virus because of this. Remember that most users are not compter experts.
> Here's the bill sir, R195.
< Did I have a virus?
> No you dumb f&*k, you said "Hi" in the subject line.
I wonder how many ISPs in the country have had time and money wasted because of this. Will Telkom mind producing an acceptable vocabulary for sending email?
Ron
--------
telnet smtp.saix.net 25
Trying 196.25.240.94...
Connected to smtp.saix.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 ctb-mesg7.saix.net ESMTP Postfix
helo test
250 ctb-mesg7.saix.net
mail from:<[email protected]>
250 Ok
rcpt to:<[email protected]>
250 Ok
data
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
Subject: Hi
Test message
.
550 Error: 550 Potential Virus infection
quit
221 Bye
Thats a load of BS. You are going on like the content of the email and the subject is a std that should be followed and if it is not followed you get a slap on the wrist, it is not a std.Karnaugh said:
everywhere is also pretty broad since this is the first i've heard of this :|
TheRoDent
Cool Ideas Rep
Karnaugh said:
I don't recall "Hi" being in the subject of an email being deprecated by any RFC I know of.
Karnaugh
Banned
DFantom said:
You're right, their error message should be "Stupid subject line" not "Potential Virus"
http://ds.teleport.za.net/mail1.png
Not a hard decision to make...
Common sense is a precursor to internet use, and is not the scope of RFCs.
Karnaugh
Banned
That's an absurd comparison - the intension is to curb the problem of very harmful virus messages being distributed, content filtering on a large ISP server is *impossible* (ie, very very expensive) with the volume of mail that flows through it.
If you were constantly receiving virus infected emails from SAIX (Telkom) customers you would also complain, where-as they have implemented a quick and effective solution to the problem.
If anyone sent me a mail with the subject "Hi" I'd stab them in the face, its just a silly way to write an email.
I have to agree with Vansaware, rejecting an email based solely on its subject line is daft and is the sort of thing I would expect from an admin who does not know how to do better due to technical incompetence or plain just does not know better.
In my opinion the subject line "Hi" is not that uncommon, keep in mind the majority of the users are end users, they don't care about unspoken mail etiquette. The chances are they hardly understand what email is at all. Many may even equate it with applications such as MSN where starting things off with "Hi" is appropriate. Although it would be nice for users to be net savvy it is an unreasonable expectation in much the same way as it would be unreasonable to expect everyone to be able to cook like a professional chef all the time. I would hate to be stabbed in the face if I had a chef friend round for supper and the meal was not up to his standards.
Obviously full content scanning against a regularly updated list of known malware is ideal, but as Karnaugh pointed out this may be too expensive or require too much overhead. So let us think about that.
Most vendors of content filtering offer very good bulk discounts, I am sure Telkom would qualify for extremely low per mailbox/user rates or even get a flat rate regardless of users. So software costs are unlikely to be a real barrier.
This leaves overhead, which can easily be parallelized via clustering to solve throughput bottlenecks should the scanning software be sluggish. Hardware is a once off cost, nor would particularly expensive hardware be required.
As a final point to ponder, MWEB/Tiscalli/IAfrica and many other large ISPs have been offering content scanning and spam filtering for quite some time. If they can do it in a cost effective manner with less resources than that is available to SAIX/Telkom I don't really see any line of reasoning that can justify not doing content filtering.
The bottom line, SAIX is either being cheapskate or incompetent, or both, which is I guess expected. Perhaps they just don't see the marketing angle or are unable to fathom that less viruses/spam = less bandwidth wasted = less cost. Perhaps they just don't care.
Yeah, yeah. I know. Rather long winded and only vaguely on topic.
In my opinion the subject line "Hi" is not that uncommon, keep in mind the majority of the users are end users, they don't care about unspoken mail etiquette. The chances are they hardly understand what email is at all. Many may even equate it with applications such as MSN where starting things off with "Hi" is appropriate. Although it would be nice for users to be net savvy it is an unreasonable expectation in much the same way as it would be unreasonable to expect everyone to be able to cook like a professional chef all the time. I would hate to be stabbed in the face if I had a chef friend round for supper and the meal was not up to his standards.
Obviously full content scanning against a regularly updated list of known malware is ideal, but as Karnaugh pointed out this may be too expensive or require too much overhead. So let us think about that.
Most vendors of content filtering offer very good bulk discounts, I am sure Telkom would qualify for extremely low per mailbox/user rates or even get a flat rate regardless of users. So software costs are unlikely to be a real barrier.
This leaves overhead, which can easily be parallelized via clustering to solve throughput bottlenecks should the scanning software be sluggish. Hardware is a once off cost, nor would particularly expensive hardware be required.
As a final point to ponder, MWEB/Tiscalli/IAfrica and many other large ISPs have been offering content scanning and spam filtering for quite some time. If they can do it in a cost effective manner with less resources than that is available to SAIX/Telkom I don't really see any line of reasoning that can justify not doing content filtering.
The bottom line, SAIX is either being cheapskate or incompetent, or both, which is I guess expected. Perhaps they just don't see the marketing angle or are unable to fathom that less viruses/spam = less bandwidth wasted = less cost. Perhaps they just don't care.
Yeah, yeah. I know. Rather long winded and only vaguely on topic.
SAIX will change the error message
I have just spoken to SAIX. They will not budge on filtering email with "Hi" in the subject line but they are going to change the error message to something less frightning to the end user.
Ron
I have just spoken to SAIX. They will not budge on filtering email with "Hi" in the subject line but they are going to change the error message to something less frightning to the end user.
Ron
Your common sense is not the same as anyone else's common sense. Hell I have a client who thought her PC was "broken'. Problem was speakers weren't turned on.Karnaugh said:
When it comes to people common sense is anything but common.
Its done. Thank you SAIX
telnet smtp.saix.net 25
Trying 196.25.240.94...
Connected to smtp.saix.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 ctb-mesg2.saix.net ESMTP Postfix
helo test
250 ctb-mesg2.saix.net
mail from:<[email protected]>
250 Ok
rcpt to:<[email protected]>
250 Ok
data
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
Subject: Hi
Test
.
550 Error: 550 Viagra SPAM - Hi in Subject
quit
221 Bye
telnet smtp.saix.net 25
Trying 196.25.240.94...
Connected to smtp.saix.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 ctb-mesg2.saix.net ESMTP Postfix
helo test
250 ctb-mesg2.saix.net
mail from:<[email protected]>
250 Ok
rcpt to:<[email protected]>
250 Ok
data
354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
Subject: Hi
Test
.
550 Error: 550 Viagra SPAM - Hi in Subject
quit
221 Bye