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

[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*