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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.
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...
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
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.
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 a bug in an antisam update" - you missed one!
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
It's not s\0x71am, it's "unsolicited bulk email". Now we know the motivation behind this renaming... ;-)
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....
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!
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
"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
Anything that provides cheap and easy acccess to millions of 'potential customers' will always attract morons prepared to abuse the system regardless of the consequences for others. To replace email at this point would be a staggering endeavour with no guarantee the same abuse will not take place with the new system.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
...when the funniest thing you have read in a while is about a software update causing random e-mail loss...
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!
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?)