Yesterday, the ctpp-news listserv was hit by the SoBig virus. Basically
this virus works by sending itself to everybody in the infected
machine's Outlook address book. It also confuses where the virus came
from by masquerading as somebody else in the same Outlook address book.
The ctpp-news listserv is somewhat immune to this virus because the only
people who can post to the listserv are people who subscribe. So a SoBig
virus email that says it comes from billg(a)microsoft.com wouldn't go to
the list because billg(a)microsoft.com isn't a subscriber to ctpp-news.
Unfortunately, if the virus tries enough random email addresses from
somebody who subscribes to the ctpp-news listserv, it will eventually
hit the combination of email address that will allow it to post to the
listserv which in this case is sending from somebody who subscribes to
ctpp-news and to ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net.
Also unfortunately, it seems that more people who subscribe to the list
have been hit by the virus because I stopped a few more virus emails
from getting distributed to the bulk of the list. To protect the list, I
took the step of preventing emails to the ctpp-news listserv from
posting without my direct approval. So there will be delays to post to
the list until I read my email and approve incoming email.
I am working on a long term solution that will strip "bad attachments"
to email before they get distributed to the list but I don't have a
timeframe when it could be completed.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Chris Parrinello
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