Re: Newbie issues with Sylpheed-Claws Win 32.

On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 13:18:06 +0200
Thorsten Maerz <[email protected]> wrote:

> > What I am unsure of is whether NAV 2003 still protects enough
> > without scanning the e-mails as it does with other programs.
> 
> Please define "enough".
> If you expect NAV to better decode mails than Sylpheed, use it.
> If the commandline scanner does a worse job than the GUI,
> then complain at Symantec.

Maybe I don't understand the concepts behind this. You say that NAV
decodes the mails before passing them on to the client? In my NAV
2003 prefs, only scanning is mentioned and I can see that for what
ever reason NAV doesn't seem to be able to scan my e-mails as they
are downloaded as with other e-mail clients. Which program does mime
decoding doesn't matter so much to me, I just want to make sure I
am protected from viruses, but SC puts me in a conundrum as the issue of
e-mail client - NAV problems(conflict or mismatch) has never come up for
me before. My NAV does have "auto-protect" enabled, but is this OK?

> > I don't know how vulnerable SC is using NAV 2003
> 
> If you think NAV makes Sylpheed vulnerable, don't use it.
> What did you really mean?

As above. I am just concerned about virus protection.

> > I know that Sylpheed and SC has roots in Linux, but why concentrate
> > on a command line scanner? What is wrong with getting SC to work
> > with what most users are comfortable with - a GUI AV app?
> 
> Nothing, just set up the scanner correctly: Anything that changes
> systems behaviour (virus scanners, personal firewalls) has to be
> configured to work together with the other apps:

This is why I am trying to fumble my way to an answer as to how to
configure NAV 2003 (in practical terms) to work properly with SC.

> The "victim" apps don't get informed by scanners that a blocking
> takes place - all IO functions simply don't return (and the app
> cannot respond to anything --> hang). You cannot expect any
> application to handle this.
> Even checking access before *any* IO system call (just joking:
> bloating the source with checks and checks for the checks
> makes it unmaintainable) is no solution, if the blocking starts
> -while- read/write is taking place.
> 
> Non-technically:
> Working together requires *inter*action, but scanners only *act*.

This I sort of understand 8-)

> And don't tell me only Sylpheed is affected - I experience
> lots of problems at work with different software and different
> scanners caused by blocking file access (of course without any
> reason like viruses).

Maybe not, but this is the first time I have heard of such a problem and
I haven't even experienced it, so it is kind of hard for me to put into
a frame of reference.

> Securing a system is no trivial task that works without
> configuration or system knowledge. This is an illusion
> that sells well.

Which is why I am trying to learn how to setup NAV to work properly with
SC, if I could only phrase the problem correctly.

Cheers,

Brian



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