--- Donald Lee Granberry <noharness@mac.com> wrote:

First, allow me to congratulate the composer for his ingenuity, given that
the author somehow managed to smuggle a binary file onto a mailing list
which is designed, and expected by its subscribers to be a strictly ASCII
list for prose fiction.

With appropriate praise out of the way, I proceed with the Bronx cheers.
This really is a list for stories written in PROSE legible to the machinery
possessed by all its participants. Your sending a file to us in this fashion
clogs our e-mail boxes with stuff many of us lack the means of
appreciating--because we do not have the utilities on hand to convert the
file you sent. I very much dislike receiving messages of this length when I
have little or no hope of seeing, hearing or otherwise apprehending their
content. 

PLEASE BE GOOD ENOUGH TO REFRAIN FROM SENDING SUCH THINGS TO FFML IN THE
FUTURE, OR ALTERNATIVELY, FIND SOME MEANS OF HAVING IT AVOID MY E-MAIL BOX.

Such binary files sent to list are almost certainly virueses of some sort, and not done so by their sender's intent.  Some time back, there was a rash of klez posts; this may be another version of that.  Or, it may the bugbear virus that apparently is going around now.

If it is klez, then it almost certainly did not come from the person whose address appears in the From header.  I have not read enough about bugbear to determine whether it also forges email headers.  Nor do I have any intention of attempting to recreate the binary file to determine exactly what it is.  Unfortunately, looking at the full headers tells me nothing, since the Sender header has, of course, been set to ffml-bounce.  The list administrators will need to look at the original message as received by the list and take whatever action is appropriate.  Their track record for handling such things is quite good; I suggest we simply leave it to them.

(Granted, there is absolutely no excuse for getting such a virus in the first place, much less sending it on to a mailing list such as this.  Enough antivirus software is available to prevent this sort of thing, if only people would bother to install and use it properly.  Also, a little common sense will prevent the vast majority of viral infections.  If you receive an executable file from someone you don't know, DO NOT RUN IT.  If you receive an exectutable file from someone you do know that you are not expecting, DO NOT RUN IT.  Hell, don't run executables received through email at all, even if you think you know exactly what they are.  There are far better ways to make those sorts of transfers, such as via FTP.  Note that screensavers are executable files, as are MS Word documents.)
 

Many thanks,


Don Granberry.

Defender of the Light
Elite Mage
junior member of the Inner Circle of the Mages Council

Contrary to popular opinion, magic and science do mix.

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