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Summary: FSATech Listserv Received an email which Contained a virus

Publication Date: January 30, 2004

Author: General Manager| Students Channel| FSA ASEDS

Summary: FSATech Listserv Received an email which Contained a virus


Posted on 01-30-2004


TO: All Destination Points

FROM: U.S. Department of Education

RE: FSATech Listserv Received an email which Contained a virus

Last week, FSATech listserv received an email which contained a virus.

The listserv was temporarily brought offline to prevent the virus from

causing damage and being passed on to subscribers. When the listserv

was later brought back online, the listserv configuration was

unintentionally modified, allowing non-subscribers, such as spam

vendors, to post messages to the list. As a result, one of those spam

vendors managed to post an advertisement of a sexual nature to the list.

Our filters managed to prevent the message from being posted to

individual subscribers, but did not prevent it from being included in

the Digest (wherein several postings are included in a single email to

Digest subscribers). This inadvertent posting was discovered quickly.

An apology was issued to the subscriber who brought this to our

attention and we are truly sorry if any of our subscribers were

offended.

We have since taken steps to insure such an incident does not occur

again. We have configured our server differently and are confident we

will be able to overcome any future attacks of that nature.

Again, we apologize for this incident. If you have further concerns,

please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you.