[pmmail-list] virus kills pmmail

[Alex Taylor]

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 07:56:50 +0100 (BST), "Dave Saville" wrote:

>>It's a long-standing (was going to say "known", but as I think of it
>>I've never received any confirmation back from BSW from all the
>>complaints, attached messages that crash PMMail/2, etc, that I've
>>sent over the past 2 years about this problem) issue with PMMail/2.
>
>I also contacted Norman, and there is a new version due soon that
>will at least delete the mail before pmmail sees it. According to
>Norman support "A program trying to open a file that we find infected
>will get error 5 (access denied) in return."
>
>Now to my simple mind I suspect that what is happening inside pmmail
>is that it *knows* it just wrote xyzzy123.MSG and when it can't read
>back what it *knows* is there it craps out. ie they have not
>correctly coded checking return codes from open because "we just
>wrote the file it *must* be there and *must* have opened OK". They
>then go on and read from a closed file handle or something and fall
>over.
>
>Most likely this explains a good percentage of "spam kills pmmail"
>problems. Now who gets killer spam and has *no* AV in place?

I get 'killer spam' all the time in PMMail/2, and I have no AV at all.

In general, the messages that cause PMMail/2 to crash all seem to have null 
subjects.  However, it can't _just_ be that which causes it, because some 
null-subject messages don't cause the crash.

Fortunately, almost all my spam goes to the now-deprecated email address 
which I used on all my public newsgroup postings for years... nowawdays I 
just check it every few weeks, and always use Remote Control.  (It gets 
about 400 spam and maybe 1 good mail per week.)

-- 
Alex Taylor <alextaylor41@rogers.com>
http://eddie.cis.uoguelph.ca/~alex
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