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Virus warning

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Sep 17, 2001
673
US
For those who use virus protection on their email server and have not had a virus attack, this is for you. Just before April 1st we upgraded our email server but first reinstalled on a new server. (Keep in mind we use Lotus Domino and have always had Mcafee email scanner/cleaner running.) One missed step in re-install - email virus scanner. A few days later on April 1st BAM. All servers come to a halt and everybody is getting infected with PATE.B virus. Infects .exe and a couple of others. The .exe could be in winnt/* so system may not boot after clean etc. Well here is the interesting thing. We have Mcaffee ASAP running on most all machines. Automatic web updates every 24 hours. Well come to find out it did not detect or clean the virus. So we reinstall Enterprise 7 version and on-access scanner on all servers and workstation to help us weed out any last infectees. Basically we lost about 2 weeks because we had many computers simply croak from infected boot files. Plus having to restore some servers and reinstall some from scratch. You say: you should have had virus protection. But what happens when you are secure in virus software and you actually get hit with virus and the protection fails? We had Mcaffee ASAP but it FAILED miserably. So for those of you who re-install an email server, trust me, the viruses are waiting for you to miss that one critical step of installing the email scanner. Yes stupid and unprofessional to have done such a mistake but remember it happens.
 
So sorry you had so much trouble.

One of the things we as techs forget sometimes is that the antivirus protection is never 100%.

Somebody has to get a new virus for the rest of the world to know it exists....and disaster recovery plans need to be in place...just in case.

I hope you have it sorted out now, and good luck in the future. It was very thoughtful of you to post the information so that others do not have to go through what you did.

CHEERS!

Kimber

Members of Tek-Tips provide answers to questions based on the information given. For the best answers, post detailed descriptions of the issue. Use the search features of the site to see if your issue was already addressed in another thread.
 
Well that is why when we install a new mail server we run the eicar test file to adjust the configuration. If you could have done that you could propably find the hole in your installation.
 
Sounds like you have a FAQ there support66. Why don't you post the eicar text in one. With credits of course.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.
 
Thanks for the advice edfair. Nice idea I will add this on FAQ.
 
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