Berkeley Lab CIS ITSD Logo
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
A-Z Index Search Phone Book Help Request Form

VirusWall: Email Messages That Only Contain a Virus Alert Notice

QUESTION: Why do some email messages *only* contain the virus alert notice and no other content in the body of the message?

ANSWER: "An email message that only contains the virus alert notice and no other content was likely sent to you by a worm. A worm is a kind of virus that spreads automatically, without human interaction. A worm usually doesn't bother to make a pretense of sending legitimate mail; it just sends an *empty* message (no body text) with a copy of the worm attached.

When the Lab's VirusWall cleans the worm (usually by deleting the attachment), the resulting message is simply the notice of this action, which the VirusWall inserts into the previously empty message.

During major virus attacks, you may see several of these messages, which we agree are tedious and annoying. We are currently evaluating how to better deal with this problem.

This webpage describes the lbl.gov email-VirusWall software.

ITSD

© Copyright 2001 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Page Owner:  help@lbl.gov

Last modified Tue Jul 8 13:31:54 PDT 2003