It was Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:58:00 +0200 when alan wrote:
># The anti virus programmes, it seems to me, are used in conjuction with
>fetchmail/postfix/sendmail/qmail/procmail/etc where the mail is intercepted
>before being received or sent. Am I right in this assumption?
Yup.
># If I am wrong then what is the most efficient way to set up kmail or
>netscape direct dial system to incorporate virus protection for my linux sys
>and as a secondary consideration, my M$Win98 sys
The thing is that most virus scanners for Linux will scan for Windows virae.
So if you plan on moving your mail on to the windowz partition, then setting
up some viral mousetrap is a good idea. The virae that you get inside the
linux environment are 99.9% windows based, and these can't do a thing in
Linux.
>I do have Win98 on my first hd that I occasionally access via linux to
>retrieve files or archive mdk files. Sometimes I use Win98 directly. I do not
>access the internet form my M$Win98 drive (at the present).
>
># Is it possible for a Win virus to migrate to the win98 hda when accessing
>it using a file manager assuming that I do not directly copy an email or
>attachment to the Win98 hd?
I doubt that very much. If you keep internet related things away from the
win9x partition, that should be safe.
># If I did want to copy the contents of an email to the M$win hd would it be
>okay if the contents where copied to a text file and the text file copied
>across for use in say Corel WP8, I do not use M$ Office at all, at all!
That would not be a problem. Virae are programs, not text files.
># Recently however I archived my kmail and netscape 'mail box' on the win98
>hda whilst I changed the file sys over to reisersFS - could a problem arise
>in a case like this?
Not really. If you just dump things there, change to Reiser, and copy things
back, there is no problem. Just don't open anything suspicious (unknown
senders, weird attachments that you don't expect to arrive). Delete that lot.
>Sorry for the verbosity but I sometimes think that I have all straightened up
>in my mind when one of the mails on the list says, "/var/spool/mail/ . . . ,
>then I know that the list is talking about something else and not a direct
>connection to the Internet from the mail programme.
>
>Thanks and regards
>Alan Smith
>PS just read about the SirCam virus - do I panic slowly?
I have already received it 4 times this last week. It can't hurt a linux
machine. You can also detect that virus easily: it has 2 extensions.
Examples that I got in:
book.xls.pif
resume.doc.pif
The poison is in the pif. Program Information File. Means executable. Most
newbie winders users don't know that. PIFs were the major way to get things
straight in Win3.x
Hope this helps
Paul
--
Nothing can hold back a dream.
http://nlpagan.net - Registered Linux User 174403
Linux Mandrake 8.0 - Sylpheed 0.5.1
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