Several changes to the campus electronic mail delivery system have been made recently to improve network security, without adversely impacting performance.
The number of computer virus infections has been steadily increasing over the past several years and is continuing to rise. Many computers are lacking the necessary virus detection software and do not have the most recent security patches to prevent virus infection.
NACS has therefore modified the campus Mail Transfer Agent computers (MTAs) to employ software called “MailScanner” and “Sophos Anti-Virus Interface” (SAVI) to limit the number of viruses campus personnel receive via e-mail.
MailScanner is software which examines every e-mail message coming onto campus. If the message has an attachment, it hands the attachment to SAVI, which tests the attachment to see if it carries a virus. Details of these mail processing steps are available athttp://www.nacs.uci.edu/email/virus-scanning.html The database SAVI uses to identify viruses is automatically updated every night.
The campus receives approximately 180,000 messages a day, and to compensate for the additional computation represented by MailScanner and SAVI, the MTAs have been upgraded to new SunFire 280R systems. In the first few weeks of use, MailScanner and SAVI successfully deflected 10,000 viruses a day, representing about 7% of the total mail volume the campus receives. 75-80% of those viruses have been “Klez” which is particularly harmful as it disguises the actual sender of the attachment. Because of this, some people on campus have been warned they sent viruses that they were not, in fact, responsible for. NACS has decided to temporarily cease issuing notifications to senders of viruses, due to the confusion this causes.
While e-mail is the most common way of getting a virus, and while the new system limits e-mail borne viruses from off campus, individual owners should remain actively involved in the protection of their systems from viruses. Seehttp://www.nacs.uci.edu/security/virus.html for more information.
Future efforts will include an assessment of the feasibility of removing Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE or Spam). Comments are welcome: nacs@uci.edu