Re: better techniques to identify and remove zero-day viruses from cyrus store sought

2007-08-23 Thread John Crawford
Jorey Bump wrote, On 8/22/2007 8:23 AM:
 John Crawford wrote:
 
 Sieve is during delivery to the cyrus store though.
 As we have the capability to identify hazards to our
 users, I'd like to be able to exercise central
 strategies improve their quality of life. So I seek
 tools to leverage after detection to aid with
 removal or remediation.

 Maybe would be nice to have a just-in-time scan interface
 at the cyrus message level just as a message is being
 accessed. CPU processing is getting cheaper all the time.
 
 Hmm, this is an interesting problem. At one extreme, you're changing the 
   mailstore or connection while the user is logged in, which could 
 result in some confusion (and possibly trigger some client software 
 issues). At the other extreme, you may have an account that hasn't been 
 checked for weeks, so it's fine to remove malicious messages that have 
 accumulated due to lack of detection before delivery. You also have to 
 be careful not to remove messages that have been forwarded to your 
 support address, as they will contain strings that may trigger detection.
 
 To handle all cases safely, you'd probably want to script using 
 Cyrus::IMAP::Shell, so all changes are performed via IMAP. You can do 
 this safely with Cyrus because it supports concurrent R/W access. 
 Instead of deleting these messages, you'll want to put them in a 
 quarantine account so you can restore them in the case of false positives.

I don't see that it's possible to read any particular message, or
to iterate and evaluate content of messages with Cyrus::IMAP::Shell.
Do I miss something?

 
 I'm still not sure I'd be comfortable doing this beneath the nose of a 
 logged in user. I'd also hesitate to touch anything outside the INBOX 
 (and any quarantine folders you provide), since it can be assumed that 
 the message was moved due to user action. I'd probably test this for a 
 long time only on accounts that aren't being checked regularly (this 
 also has the benefit of reducing the size of abandoned accounts).
 
 Have you found that the risks justify this effort? Are your ClamAV scans 
 of the mailstore turning up anything? Are they serious threats?

Yes, I get very good results of content I would like to safely
hide away.  I use standard clamav with the usual clamav signatures.
I've not experienced problems from any false positives. I'll
have a signature update, and it will find messages received 50 minutes 
earlier - ones my users don't need to be exposed to.

thanks,
John



 
 
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Re: better techniques to identify and remove zero-day viruses from cyrus store sought

2007-08-22 Thread Jorey Bump
John Crawford wrote:

 Sieve is during delivery to the cyrus store though.
 As we have the capability to identify hazards to our
 users, I'd like to be able to exercise central
 strategies improve their quality of life. So I seek
 tools to leverage after detection to aid with
 removal or remediation.
 
 Maybe would be nice to have a just-in-time scan interface
 at the cyrus message level just as a message is being
 accessed. CPU processing is getting cheaper all the time.

Hmm, this is an interesting problem. At one extreme, you're changing the 
  mailstore or connection while the user is logged in, which could 
result in some confusion (and possibly trigger some client software 
issues). At the other extreme, you may have an account that hasn't been 
checked for weeks, so it's fine to remove malicious messages that have 
accumulated due to lack of detection before delivery. You also have to 
be careful not to remove messages that have been forwarded to your 
support address, as they will contain strings that may trigger detection.

To handle all cases safely, you'd probably want to script using 
Cyrus::IMAP::Shell, so all changes are performed via IMAP. You can do 
this safely with Cyrus because it supports concurrent R/W access. 
Instead of deleting these messages, you'll want to put them in a 
quarantine account so you can restore them in the case of false positives.

I'm still not sure I'd be comfortable doing this beneath the nose of a 
logged in user. I'd also hesitate to touch anything outside the INBOX 
(and any quarantine folders you provide), since it can be assumed that 
the message was moved due to user action. I'd probably test this for a 
long time only on accounts that aren't being checked regularly (this 
also has the benefit of reducing the size of abandoned accounts).

Have you found that the risks justify this effort? Are your ClamAV scans 
of the mailstore turning up anything? Are they serious threats?


Cyrus Home Page: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/
Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki
List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html


Re: better techniques to identify and remove zero-day viruses from cyrus store sought

2007-08-22 Thread Jorey Bump
Jorey Bump wrote:

 Have you found that the risks justify this effort? Are your ClamAV scans 
 of the mailstore turning up anything? Are they serious threats?

I've just scanned a mailstore with ClamAV, and about 95% of the 'FOUND' 
infected files were false positives. Here there be dragons.

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Re: better techniques to identify and remove zero-day viruses from cyrus store sought

2007-08-21 Thread Joseph Brennan

John Crawford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 What's the best way, and second best way to react to zero-day virus
 threats - messages that are delivered to the mail store before the
 detection is in place?


Refuse mail with executable attachments.  List is at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/262631
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/829982

This 100% effective and there are no zero-day or zero-hour problems.
Done here since February 2003.

Joseph Brennan
Lead Email Systems Engineer
Columbia University Information Technology



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Re: better techniques to identify and remove zero-day viruses from cyrus store sought

2007-08-21 Thread Jorey Bump
John Crawford wrote:

 What's the best way, and second best way to react to zero-day virus
 threats - messages that are delivered to the mail store before the
 detection is in place? 

Any detection that can take place in the mail store can (and should) be 
moved up the chain, preferably to the MTA.

 Is there a best practice that functions nicely
 within the cyrus community? 

Yes, once a message is delivered, leave it alone. The most you should do 
  at that point is maybe provide an opt-in sieve rule that stores 
suspicious messages in a special folder. But even this has caveats, and 
I prefer to let the users sort their own mail.






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