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Trend Micro Quarantines Letter P
kkenedy writes "I thought this was the funniest thing I have read in a long time: CRN reports that a bug in an update to one of Trend Micro's security products inadvertently blocks all incoming e-mail containing the letter P." Makes me glad I don't use it, else I wouldn't get any mail, purely on the basis of my surname.
First ost, first ost!
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
S(P)AM - if they would only advertise the unsolicited mail as such. :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Emails telling me that I can enlarge my penis...
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
eter ier icked a eck of ickled eer :)
if eter ier icked a eck of ickled eer
wheres the ickled eer eter ier ecked
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
Rules are always made to be broken. It just seems odd to take so much learsure in someone else's ain. Maybe they were aranoid about 'golden showers' or some other ervision. Well, someone at Trend Macro has come up with a roject lan to ass through a new change.
Some people have a way with words, others not have way.
Sources within the company say that the bug is not the result of an unfortunate typo, but rather the outcome of an anti-spam filter which was intended to remove all obscene references to urine from email. The National Association of Urologists and Endocrinologists is up in arms.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
"In the United States, customers have been contacted directly via e-mail, and we've notified the reseller channel."
;P
Wonder if those mails had the letter
Would you like to have a larger qenis?
Men, are you sick and tired of women sighing with disaqqointment when you take
off your trousers?
Doesn't it really qiss you off?
Well now with new QENISGROW2000, (a unique herbal remedy) you can have them
GASQ when you UNSHEATH your manhood.
grasqee
While strange this didn't get picked up before being released (seems they need to adjust their test samples).
Kudos to them for fixing it within an hour and a half, and notifying registered clients and resellers.
Neal doesn't have a p in it.
Your name is Cowboy Neal, is it not?
Ummmm, like time to expand your horizons maybe?
I wonder if that's case sensitive, or if it just reacts to a certain case...
I hope that they at least have it fixed by now...I know that I'd be having a problem if I were to get not e-mail with the letter p in it...then all the junk mail I'd get would be gone! What ever would I do if Babette was no longer waiting for me?
In order to be immortal you must be organize
Our corporation has incorporated some content inspection product for email. After doing so, a certain employee stopped receiving emails. It turned out that it was because he had "shit" in his name ;-)
they can't even send e-mails to their customers about the problem!
:)
if they put letter p in it, it's banned
or
(b) sex with a mareFrom: suort@microsoft.com
Here's a link to our latest Service Ack for the Windows X Oerating system. lease download this 550MB Service Ack, and all your roblems will be solved.
Eole (figure this one!) with NT4 and below will not be suorted. The rice for this roduct under Subscrition Advantage will be $100 er year er license.
Issued in ublic interest by the Entagon.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
"We wanted to be as open as possible about this," he said. "In the United States, customers have been contacted directly via e-mail, and we've notified the reseller channel."
Please note out program doesn't work. Please don't be pissed at us....
hehehe
You mean their QA actually signed off a product that rejected p but accepted 25 other potentially dangerous alphabetical characters ? The mind boggles. The only way to be safe is to block all the evil characters and let the digits through
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Fighting spam is simple, or so it seems. A fourth of all spam is easily removed by filtering the p. When (Uncle) Sam is removed from the picture, all Sam will be eradicated.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Wachovia has been blocking ALL email with "hi" in the title for almost 2 years now with no notice of what the problem is, just "rejected due to policy". But they do NOT view it as a problem even though they have around 25,000-30,000 employees. If only 1% are entitled "hi" and each gets maybe 10 emails a day, that is 2500-3000 emails blocked per day with no notice.
Nice service from a BANK. Their tech department is pretty stupid.
"...customers have been contacted directly via e-mail..."
;]
How do you tell customers you sold them faulty software that blocks the letter P in emails, without actually putting the letter P in the email you are using to notify them ?
Suggestion - the problem affects all mails that contain the letter after O and before Q
I heard that Microsoft is paying off Slashdot to not include a spell checker for the posts. It's all a conspiracy to make geeks look less educated.
of a problem a the local government of Scunthorpe (UK) had recently. Their obscenity checker balked at a substring of the town name.....
Due to recent a recent bug, any emails containing the letter 'P' have been filtered by an update to our software.
You can recover your email from the 'Quarantine' folder.
We are sorry for any confusion this might have caused, and include the missing material below:
Please insert as required.
PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
pppppppppppppppppppppp
You can't tell them about the problem, because the problem is with the letter p!
Perhaps difficulty would be a better word.
I always wondered what Sesame Street would be like if Monty Python bought them!
English -- gotta love it! / The engineers refuse to refuse the rocket until the refuse is removed from the launch pad.
A certain unnamed tester at Trend Micro was given the _ink sli_
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
ok...so my pathetic attempts at 1337 really suck.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
;-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
This brings to light a whole new world of _ossibilities.
What other letters would slashdotters like to see disa_ear?
Many _eople will vote to lose the letters MS so here they go never to return in _o_t_ on _la_dot.
Over the la_t few week_ many have _uggested that the letter_ _CO sh_uld never been _een again. __ here they g_.
___e here d_n't like the letter_ B_D __ there they g_.
unf_rtunatly we are n_t left _any letter_ t_ use for variable_ and ___n all the i'_ and j'_ will used u_.
_n_e we _tarted to l__e all the v_wels in our __st_ thing_ g_t even wor_e.
_v_nt_lly th_ __n_t_nt_ w_nt __ w_ll _nd l_ft _s w_th v_ry l_ttl_ l_ft.
_____ ___ _ __ ___ ___ ___.
_______
blog and junk
product x blocks the letter y, makes me glad I don't use it. (bracketing comma) e.g.
...
Ted woke, his head pounding, at a slightly earlier time than usual.
This would read
product x blocks the letter y, makes me glad I don't use it[y].
product x blocks the letter y. makes me glad I don't use it.
this would read
product x blocks the letter y. makes me glad I don't use it[x].
is removed, I believe. Here's the effects on some of the mails:
...
1. Sent thru Microsoft Assport - your secure login to the e-world.
2. I assed my MCSE exams.
3. Laying with colleagues might land you in harassment charges.
4. All work and no Lay makes Jack
5. Boys and Girls, come out to lay
The moon does shine as bright as day!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Kidna makes me wonder as to how much time they spend making that and if they even tested it before releasing it...
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I wonder if you can get around this by writing "P" in HTML code:
p=p
P=P
All this talk of P blockage makes me... um...
S'cuse me, gotta go!
Bush should have died, not Reagan -- Morrissey
Morrissey rides a cockhorse -- The Warlock Pinchers
OK, so Trend issued a ruleset which blocks all mail containing the letter 'P' - one and a half hours later, they fixed the problem, which is pretty good going IMHO.
I've been using Trend's Desktop solution (OfficeScan) at work for just over a year now, with no problems at all. Trend have a very good reputation for updating their rulesets very very quickly when a new virus hits the wild - for example in the case of "Love Bug" a couple of years back, they had a new pattern file available in less than 45 minutes, where other vendors took 24 to 36 hours.
Since OfficeScan (and AFAIK, all the Trend Products) can be configured to automatically update their Pattern, Engine and Core files whenever a new version becomes available, that effectively means that all desktop PC's and Servers can be running with suitable pattern files before you even see any incidence of a new virus.
People need to get some perspective on this issue - Yes, there was a problem, but it's fixed. Trend's product base is very stable, very fast and very effective. One small problem like this is just that: small !
Disclaimer: No, I don't work for Trend - I'm just a very happy end user
Disclaimer: I meant what I thought, not what I wrote! What? You can't read my Mind? Oh dear!
All of that ridiculous penis enlargment mail may stay the hell out of my inbox now!
This is ironic but at my company who runs a medium sized ecommerce site every so often blasts emails that get blocked within our own company. We are filtering spam by the subject lines, so email with 'Free Shipping' or 'Big Savings' get blocked. It seems like a pretty weak solution to stop spam but its the best some of our network engineers can come up with on a low budget. I think the industry needs to be challenged for a new solution to replace conventional email.
Yes, the product has the potential for big-brother type thing (filtering mail, etc...) but we don't use it for any of that.
:)
;)
#1) We use it along with Viruswall to block incoming viruses (It's a proxy that sits in front of Sendmail for us....) Works really well; we haven't had a virus outbreak in 2+ years. (Lousy Outlook!)
#2) We use it to filter out Spam. I don't get _any_ Spam at my work address. At all. Very impressive if you ask me!
Viruswall & eManager are pretty ugly pieces of code, but they do the job. We don't get viruses and don't get Spam, and that's why we use it.
Having said that, this stop-the-P thing is a mess. I just checked our rulefiles, and we jumped from rulefile 914 to 920..... glad to see that
--DM
It's a consiracy!!!! I knew it would haen.
I know some of my colleagues well enough that I don't write to them with "Dear sir". So it is stupid.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
In this type of case, one overpowering rule makes the program more harmful than helpful. Being too sensitive greatly decreases specificity as well... thus the system spirals into uselessness.
Anyway, Cloudmark is a commerical product based on vipul's razor. Sadly, vipul's razor will not compile in the window's environment yet.
God, I hate spam
Davak
"We wanted to be as open as possible about this," he said. "In the United States, customers have been contacted directly via e-mail, and we've notified the reseller channel."
I can see the email now -
"Due to an error in our most recent update, e-mails containing a certain letter are now blocked. We can't tell you which one. Really. But make sure you u . . . reset your security setting ASA . . err really quickly.
Listen - just do it right now - this is embarrassing.
Thank you - Trend Micro"
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
I am the patent owner of the letter 'P'(TM). Trend Micro will be hearing from my legal representative till they desist from P(TM)'s unlicensed usage.
me thnks wld b btr 2 rmv th vwls.
The only emails with vowels are spam... I work at a school. Damn mobile phones.
could you write most emails without using that letter?
Or Slashdot comments for that matter. (I'm doing fine so far) Maybe one could discard that letter totally. It's clearly just redundant.
What about writing an entire novel without using the most common letter of the english (or french) language ("e")? Take a look at "The Void" ("La Disparition") for example.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
...when the funniest thing you have read in a while is about a software update causing random e-mail loss...
based payper liesense hostage ransom stock markup felons.
just don't give 'em any real money for a while, & they'll go away. it might be a long while, but they WILL go away.
consult with yOUR creator.
so what? i don't use that letter, and neither do my friends.
The fix is extremely simple, I suppose so it would be pretty horrific if it took them longer than one and a half hour!
Mr. Burns: Okay, let's make this sporting, Leonard. If you can tell me why I shouldn't fire you without using the letter "E", you can keep your job. Lenny: Ah... okay...um... I'm a good work... guy... Mr. Burns: You're fired. Lenny: But I didn't say--! Mr. Burn: You will... (OPENS TRAP DOOR) Lenny: Eieeeee-e-e-e-e-e-eee!
"This Slashdot article was brought to you by the letter 'P', and the number '2'. Because we're sure it'll get posted twice..."
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I fall into one of those "low double digit customers".... and even blank emails were getting stripped. As the filter also checks embedded code (RTF, HTML, etc)... even a blank email's gonna have a P in it somewhere... Only exception here was OWA and some Mac users where messages seemingly used plain text for the most part. 2 hour window of all mail gone into the ether. Fun
Perpetrated by the letter H and the number 5!
Laws are for people with no friends.
They had to retract the use of the letter P due to pending legal action by SCO who claim that they orginally came up with most of the letter P and the number 3 and the semicolon... but the Spelling Community thinks that with proper replacements for the copywrited characters, the whole desperate affair can be largely ignored.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
Nobody had bothered to teach us about debuggers at that stage, so we tried our best inserting diagnostic printf's everywhere, but despite days of searching we could never find what was causing it. In the end, we inserted some code to count to where the end of the string should have been and replace the "p" with a null character.
We got marked down anyway. I still have the source code somewhere, but I haven't dared to look at it for fear of provoking the code gods ... :/
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I remember last year that their mail filtering system (I think it's the Interscan antivirus) that would block all messages with "!!!" claiming that it was spam. I knew a lot of people who complained about this because sometimes for informal discussion, to emphasize something you might use "!!!" in your message.
;)
I just hope Interscan doesn't block slashdot because of this comment.
Take-off every
The company my father-in-law contracts at has a corporate content filtering that sends emails along the lines of-
- Content blocked
From-Administrator@ObliviousCorporation.com
Subj
An email you received was blocked due to objectionable content-
Sender-Freestuff@spammer.com
Time-05/22/03 8:55pm
Filter violation-HUGEHORSECOCK
Oblivious Corporation policy requires that we make efforts to protect you from objectionable material. If you feel that this filter has blocked legitimate business related correspondence, please contact your Systems Administrator.
Thank you
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
The Children's Television Network has reported that stocks in the letter "P" have dropped sharply today. Poor software accouting practices appear to be to blame. Officials from the CTN will not comment further siting an ongoing investigation. Some reports site have linked management of Enron and Worldcom to the letter "P"s board of directors.
In related news "Q" and "R" stocks have dropped slightly due to their close relation to "P" but "O" stocks have remained stable, due mostly to its stable position as a vowel...
"the alphabxt"
Hmmm...
:p
Ya think the folks at Sesame Street would be upset by this??
Brought to you by the folks calling for the release of the letter P
OK, so Trend issued a ruleset which blocks all mail containing the letter '_' - one and a half hours later, they fixed the _roblem, which is _retty good going IMHO. I've been using Trend's Deskto_ solution (OfficeScan) at work for just over a year now, with no _roblems at all. Trend have a very good re_utation for u_dating their rulesets very very quickly when a new virus hits the wild - for exam_le in the case of "Love Bug" a cou_le of years back, they had a new _attern file available in less than 45 minutes, where other vendors took 24 to 36 hours. Since OfficeScan (and AFAIK, all the Trend _roducts) can be configured to automatically u_date their _attern, Engine and Core files whenever a new version becomes available, that effectively means that all deskto_ _C's and Servers can be running with suitable _attern files before you even see any incidence of a new virus. _eo_le need to get some _ers_ective on this issue - Yes, there was a _roblem, but it's fixed. Trend's _roduct base is very stable, very fast and very effective. One small _roblem like this is just that: small ! Disclaimer: No, I don't work for Trend - I'm just a very ha__y end user
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I had a keyboard which had a bad 'F' key so I have to spell everything with 'PH' like "phat chance". If I was still using that keyboard I would have been in some serious trouble.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
I have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old. I would like a filter like that for my swimming pool.
I'm sure there's a erfectly normal exlanation for this.
Another article to show to the boss showing him how much better off we are by going the spamass + mimedefang route over expensive, ineffective commercial crap!
I just had to finish the sig...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition # 915: Never do business with anyone with the letter "P" in their name.
... like in pneumonia and swimming?
Scunthorpe Borough Council, who installed email filtering, and promptly had all email being quarantined.
I had to ask "If Typhoo put the T in Britain, who put the cunt in Scunthorpe?"
If you use email filtering and Outlook at work and want to play a joke on someone then edit their sig to include a line that contains a lot of swear words. Then change the colour of this line to white on white, and the font size to a very small value.
It takes quite a while to figure it out!
Is it time to go home yet?
Why did I think of Sesame Street when I saw this story?
I'd also like to point out that Trend Micro offers a great free online virus scanner that comes in very handy when you get a call from a friend/relative who's having computer problems. No need to haul over and install your own virus scanner (which is undoubtedly against said virus scanner's EULA anyway) just to find out if they're infected. I can't remember if it actually CLEANS the viruses it finds, but manually removing most viruses isn't all that tough once you know what you're looking for.
The HouseCall product has also spotted viruses that Norton did not.
Dear Trend Micro:
.
You guys are oo heads for ushing out this stu id screwed u u date.
Your develo ment team is a cra y bunch of oor rogrammers and your roduct is is ile of cra
lease iss off.
Signed U set customer
It took them an hour and a half to compose a warning EMail to their customers that didn't have the letter P in in anywhere.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
Dear Trend Micro:
.
You guys are oo heads for ushing out this stu id screwed u u date.
Your develo ment team is a cra y bunch of oor rogrammers and your
roduct is is ile of cra
lease iss off.
Signed
U set customer
that would be a mighty effective spam filter!
Trouble with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
next we'll see chip manufacturers disabling the math unit, changing the pin-out, and selling it as an SX. Then sell you the same processor with the math unit enabled as a Math-CoProcessor... So you basically buy the same chip twice. Oh, wait....
Digits are safe? I think not. Recent studies indicate that up to 100% of virus-infected e-mails contain digits, particularly "1" and "0." This gives us an easy, 100% effective solution to the virus problem: block all communications contining those two troublesome digits.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
... has NOT been brought to you with the letter " P ".
Last I checked, the official USPS abbreviation for that state was HI.
:)
Ok, so it's probably a statistically unlikely problem, but if I can spot it in two seconds flat, it's probably at least somewhat of a concern.
Some of us would also feel dumb writing "Dear..." to our bosses or coworkers.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Sesame Street (and your email) was not brought to you by the letter "P". Signed, BlightThe*ower
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
The cable company is clueless. (It's Insight BB, which owns a few small cable systems in the midwestern US.) Tier I tech support doesn't know what an IP address is. Tier II tech support can't figure out which of their cable systems has that mail server. Mailing to their abuse address gets an autoreply, with no ticket number. The next step is sending a cease and desist notice by registered mail to their corporate headquarters, but it's too soon for that. Next week.
Here are the addresses involved, in case anybody wants to blacklist them.
Maybe there should be a minimum qualification level to become a broadband ISP.
is brought to you by the letters "G" and " ", and the number 3 and 7.
(Apologies to Sesame Street)
d a v e
"Hmmm...upgrades."
Sure, it's a minor bug, but how could they possibly have missed it while testing? It's not so much that the bug is a problem as that it indicates that they didn't check whether the patch worked before releasing it.
>Yes, there was a problem, but it's fixed
Exactly. How about an article on why every email I send to my friends at work comes back as, "Your email has elements of spam in it and was rejected" even though its clearly a reply from a message sent from one of their own. Multiple vendors here and yet to be fixed.
Or Symantec's years long unresolved stability bug.
"Your product crashes my system."
"No it doesn't."
I really hope this P joke doesn't hurt Trend's reputation. They make excellent products and are my prefered vendor.
Hey , letters can do whatever the hell they want!
eople need to get some perspective on this issue - Yes, there was a problem, but it's fixed. Trend's product base is very stable, very fast and very effective. One small problem like this is just that: small !
Agreed, it is a small problem - but it's a very funny one.
Most of us don't have that much going for us in our lives, especially after the bubble burst - can we just have some fun with this please?
My grandfather had that and had to go to the hospital to get a kidney stone removed. He said it hurt.
Sesame Street: This email was brought to you by the letter--
Trend Micro: --Oh no you don't!
<shred>
I can't believe they didn't send the classic "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". Back when I was doing QA, if there was a text field, I'd fill it to the gunnels with stuff like that.
The programming error was stupid, but things happen - that's why you have a QA Team.
It's also an example why it's important to have QA do something other than run matrices and automated test scripts. Those only get what they're scripted to catch, and that's not where the "critical fumbles" occur.
It's gonna take a while for them to live THIS one down.
Ralphie
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
i suppose it also filters out all emails containing the word enis.
Actually I am considering on setting up Spamassasin as well over other propietary solutions. The only trouble is that my available hardware are all Win boxes. Is your shop a hybrid one (win/unix) or pure win one? How did you setup SA? Did you use the documented method here: http://www.openhandhome.com/howtosa250.html
?
My other OS is the MCP!
We used Trend Micros product on Exchange and suddenly noticed that it was dumping a lot of resumes into the trash as they came in. And it was only the best resumes that it was trashing.
Want to guess what was offensive?
"Magna Cum Laude"
Umm, how funny is that?
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
What can you possibly hope to prove that E. V. Wright hasn't already in Gadsby (the book without an e)?
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
1. create virus scanner
2. sell the software
3. release files to make software current
4. ?
5. ?
6. rofit
Damn, I thought it was the erfect lan
There's no "P" in "QA".
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
...by Costa-Gavras, about a government that banned, among many other things, the letter "Z".
Bugs imitating movies. Omgawd, are they REALLY building Skynet???????
Trend Micro goofs up big-time, and the Slashdot crowd laughs.
Microsoft goofs up even in a small way, and the Slashdot crowd boos, hisses, and forms a lynch mob.
Yeah, that's objective.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
From the article : In the United States, customers have been contacted directly via e-mail
Does the email sent to customers contain the letter P? How can one describe the problem without using the letter P?
"There is a problem^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hissue with emails containing the 16th letter of the alp^Hfabet. You are advised to update^H^H^H^H^H^Hdownload the latest patch^H^H^H^H^Hfix from our website at http://w^Hoh damn!"
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.