AKICOLJ

[desperance]

I know my awareness of current anti-virus strategies is stunted, on account of the whole Linux thing, but I've just seen a set of submission guidelines that baffles me. The call is f or electronic submissions, as attachments, in .doc or .rtf formats - but "Submissions without virus protection will not be opened and read so please ensure your virus protection is up to date."

I don't actually know what that means. They can't be asking for active virus protection to be embedded within the attachment, because (as far as I know) you can't do that in .rtf format, and I would assume not in .doc either.

If they just want an assurance that whatever you send has been scanned for viruses by up-to-date software, then that is surely something they need to do at their end, because lesson one is not to trust what other people tell you.

Or does my complacent lack-of-anxiety about this whole area mean that I've missed a major new development in anti-viral strategy, and is everybody soon going to be demanding a level of cover that I'm simply not aware of...?

In other news, snowpocalypse: we can has. Whole inches of it. I'm thinking of taking the boys out into the yard with a camera, just to see what they make of it.

Comments

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Some anti-virus things put a little certificate at the botom of the e-mail saying "this has been scanned by [program v9.whatever]. I know AVG does.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup, I've seen that - but I'm assuming that you could just type that? In and of themselves, the words carry no guarantee that it's actually true.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Chances are their own scanner will check it, but it's to make sure that these flighty artistic types have proper anti-virus on their machines...

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Those disclaimers are only ads for the virus scanning companies, rather than useful in any detectable way.

Their whole submission policy is so broken as to be moronic.

[jemck.livejournal.com]

dunno what they mean about virus-free submissions, unless they want you to put one of those signatures saying 'this message has been checked and blah-blah' - which I regard as meaningless, coz, yes, trust no one on this etc.

(and er, what does AKICOLJ mean?)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

All Knowledge Is Contained In LJ (at least, that's my own solution; I've seen it all over on requests-for-information posts. I could of course be utterly wrong, but that's what it means when I use it...).

And yes, as above: you could just type in the signature blah-di-blah. So if they mean that, they're just being foolish; and if they don't, then I don't know what they mean.

Perhaps I should write to them and ask...?

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what it means. I believe it's a neologism from the old fannish AKICIF (All Knowledge Is Contained In Fandom).

And yes, I suspect they want the little certificate thingy. Of course, if you're a Ltd company they're actually against the company registration rules, as your only signature on email must be your company details...

[autopope.livejournal.com]

They're being idiots; virus-writers are quite capable of writing malware that inserts headers in it's eggs messages to say "this message is kosher, nothing to see here, this is not the virus you are looking for, move along now".

The only virus scanner they can rely on is their own.

Oh, and some of us don't use virus breeding OS Windows, so the question is moot.

Who are these idiots, so that I may avoid them?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I figured, but thanks for confirming.

They're a small publisher, Cinnamon Press, Wales-based and mainly dealing with poetry. I'm guessing you wouldn't come across them, but they've published a few of my friends, and they've got a call out for microfictions.

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

So I emailed Cinnamon Press, and this is the reply I got from Jan:

you're absolutely right - some virus checkers show a
message on the email, but not all so we'll just scan those :)

which I suppose means that malicious virus-spreaders should take care to fake the virus-checking message too.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

*headdesk*

Haven't these people read Schneier on cryptography/COMP.RISKS/The Hacker's Handbook/anything at all about INFOSEC discipline?

... er, no?

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

[abserdman.livejournal.com]

I demand pictures of cats and snow! *stamps foot*

We don't have much snow here, just a sprinkling that's barely sticking. But if t turns out to be more there will be pictures of doggy, and possibly bunnies, in snow!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Well, I can take pictures of cats and snow. Can't actually post 'em at the moment, on account of lacking any means to transfer same from camera to computer...

[abserdman.livejournal.com]

*pouts*

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hee. Stamping feet and pouting: you remind me strangely of your Aunt Tina...

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

I'm responsible for the web end of the CWA's Debut Dagger Competition and the rules include Any entrant who submits a file or e-mail containing a virus will be immediately disqualified and will forfeit their entry fee. which seems to me to be the sensible way of dealing with this issue. A virus scan of all the entries received to date only took a few seconds and drew a blank.