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List:       full-disclosure
Subject:    Re: [Full-Disclosure] lists, autoresponders, and netiquette
From:       Valdis.Kletnieks () vt ! edu
Date:       2004-05-28 14:19:54
Message-ID: 200405281419.i4SEJsMm024180 () turing-police ! cc ! vt ! edu
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On Thu, 27 May 2004 15:57:28 CDT, Michael Williamson <michael@puffin.tamucc.edu>  said:

> Every time I post to a list I get these "out of office" auto-responses.
> Can these responders be configured to not respond to stuff from a list?

Well.. Yes.  Sort of.  The 'vacation' program that ships with Sendmail has been
getting this right for close to 2 decades now.

The problem is that people insist on running crapware MUAs.

Obligatory security tie-in:  There's a wealth of information leakage by these
things:

1) You know the person is out of the office - meaning their desktop machine is
probably not being watched.  Improves your odds of attacking it unnoticed.

2) They're out of the office - leverage for social engineering attacks.  Call
their company: "Hey, this is Mr. Crapware - I'm at the user site and can't get
into the corporate LAN.  Can you reset my password so I can get the files I
need to close this deal?"

3) Most of the crapware that does the Out-of-Brain response is nice enough to
hand you an X-Mailer: line identifying itself, right down to the patch/build
level, so you know right away what sort of exploit to e-mail them so it will be
sitting in their Inbox when they get back and probably not being as careful
about what they open because they're swamped and trying to get caught up...


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