Block the Melissa virus

Block the Melissa virus

This page tells you how to configure sendmail so it will block the melissa
virus.  Actually, it refers you to another page, but there ya go.

What virus?

The Melissa virus comes as a Microsoft Word attachment.  It will duplicate itself
to the first 50 names in your Microsoft Outlook address book.

The fix

Sendmail, Inc have created a fix at http://www.sendmail.com/blockmelissa.html
which is a patch for this virus.  The script at that location is kind of hard to copy
and paste, so I’ve duplicated it here.  But be
sure to read the sendmail link and replace spaces with tabs as they suggest.

By the way

By the way, the script originally provided by Sendmail contained a space at the end of
LOCAL_RULESETS line which will cause the following error:

Mar 29 08:15:47 ns sendmail[23819]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): /etc/sendmail.cf: 
line 1034: unknown configuration line " "

I’ve emailed them about that.  But if you get the above error, you now know what
to do.

Other resources

Here are some other resources which have been mentioned:

http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-99-04-Melissa-Macro-Virus.html
http://www.antivirus.com/vinfo/alerts.htm
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,34334,00.html?st.ne.fd.gif.e
http://www.avertlabs.com/public/datafiles/valerts/vinfo/melissa.asp

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