[NTLUG:Discuss] [OT] sobig? - Outlook?

[Chris Cox]

terry wrote:
> I've been receiving undeliverable notices from various mail servers.
> There have been 10 in just the last 2 days, all generated by "Outlook
> Express".  I don't use Outlook Express,  I don't even use Microsoft, so
> obviously these are all generated by sobig, and, these are just the
> undeliverable ones!
> 
> To all Microsoft users:
> A vast improvement in Internet security is as simple as using an email
> program other than Outlook.
> 
> They were probably all from the same computer and God only knows how
> many successful deliveries were made.

At it's height I was received 40,000 emails a day.  About 20%
were direct sobig sends, the rest were bounce messages due
to sobig spoofing my email (one I give to potential spammers...
websites, commercial entities).  Today, I have only received
about 2,000 emails from direct sobig sends and bounce messages
from spoofed sobigs using my email address.

Spam cleanup costs Sterling Commerce anywhere from 3 to 6 million
dollars per year.

Do you think that if we eliminated Outlook and MSIE that we
could greatly reduce that figure?

Do you think that if a Sr. engineer presented the facts to
the heads of IT, they would take action?

You can probably guess the response.

If you ask me, SCO would be smarter to go after Microsoft...
their customers will throw away their money and smile
while doing so.  SCO could easily reap billions of dollars
in revenue from that segment.   ... unless attacking
Microsoft is sort of like attacking oneself... nah...
couldn't be that simple.

2 + 2 = 4