From: nick at virus-l.demon.co.uk (Nick FitzGerald)
Subject: Re: New Virus?

Brian Eckman <eckman@....edu> to me:

> First off, Nick, thanks a bunch for sharing that info with the list.

You're welcome...

> FYI, I sent in a sample to NAI using the above address. I got an 
> autoreply that it was received, then another autoreply that it was not a 
> known threat and that it was being forwarded to an AVERT researcher. So, 
> I deleted the backdoor trojan, as I had already submitted it to the 
> company we have a site license with. (I sent it into NAI as the computer 
> that was infected with it had McAfee on it.)
> 
> Later, I got an E-mail that they had a virus gateway strip the sample 
> out of my message as "potentially unsafe", and gave me further 
> instructions. They suggested using http://www.webimmune.net and/or 
> zipping it and password protecting it, using the password "infected".

Yes -- that is a tad more clue than seems reasonable to assume on the 
part of a "typical infected uswer"...

> I imagine I'm not the only one amused by the fact that they want you to 
> send malware to them in a password protected Zip file, (in light of 
> recent Bagle variants :).  ...

Actually, that has historically been a defensive measure to get samples 
_out_ from the sender's machine.  AV researchers started to receive too 
many messages that should have had suspicious attachments sent by 
helpful customers and the like but that had obviously had the 
attachments removed (or otherwise munged) by intermediary virus-
scanning gateways...

> ...  I also find it oddly amusing (being that I am 
> not a paying customer of theirs, and that only a few hundred or so 
> people on my campus likely are) that they would filter potentially 
> harmful attachments that were sent to a virus submission E-mail address.

Yes -- that is prize gormlessness...

> I'll have to tell the user to use our site licensed AV software instead 
> if they want to detect this threat in the future. (Actually, it is 
> probably still in my sent items, so I probably can comply with their 
> request. I'm just a bit perturbed that they acknowledged receipt of it, 
> then they deleted it. (Paying customers might want to take note that 
> they had their hands on something that a competitor identified as a 
> backdoor trojan, but NAI still cannot detect it because they filtered 
> E-mail sent via a virus submission address.)
> 
> Just thought I'd share my experience. Perhaps it will save someone else 
> the frustration that I had.

Indeed -- this is one of those near-comical things that you hope only 
happens to "the other guy".

I can imagine several "normal" administrative decision-making processes 
inside NAI (paralleling those of many other companies!) that make 
complete sense in light of recent developments regarding straight and 
password-protected .ZIP files, but which are quite ludicrous if you 
step back and realize that part of the business model underlying this 
company's moment-to-moment operation _requires_ that it be able to 
easily and efficiently receive (possibly) "undesirable" files from 
anyone, anywhere on the planet...


-- 
Nick FitzGerald
Computer Virus Consulting Ltd.
Ph/FAX: +64 3 3529854

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