233833 - Inbox deleted on compacting when virus is detected

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Database, defect)

Description

[Peter Kirk]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113

I received a copy of MyDoom virus in an attachment, which was detected by Norton
AntiVirus 2000 (virus data updated regularly). This blocked access to my inbox.

I temporarily disabled Norton, marked the infected message as junk, and then
deleted it from the junk folder and compacted folders. I then reenabled Norton
and went back to my inbox. Norton still blocked access to it, presumably because
the infected message was still there but just marked as deleted (and "Compact
Folders", despite its name, had not compacted all folders).

So I tried again "Compact Folders". I got another message from Norton and found
that my inbox had been completely deleted. (My junk folder, compacted when
Norton was disabled, was not deleted.)

This may be related to bug 116443 but the specific problem is rather different
as it is found on compacting folders.

Reproducible: Didn't try
Steps to Reproduce:




The problem seems to be that when Compact Folders is unable to read a folder it
does abort or flag an error, but takes this as equivalent to the folder being
empty. This is a potentially dangerous strategy as there may be many reasons,
including multi-access locks, network outages etc, as well as virus detection,
why a particular file may be temporarily unreadable, and in such cases Mozilla
should never try to delete it or overwrite it with an empty file (which may
succeed because the lock or network problem has just gone away).

Comment 1

[Peter Kirk]

Oops! I wrote "when Compact Folders is unable to read a folder it does abort or
flag an error", but of course I meant "when Compact Folders is unable to read a
folder it does *NOT* abort or flag an error".

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

.

Comment 3

[Daniel B.]

Also see bug 235588 (Inbox zeroed out when filter target folder file 
quarantined).

Comment 4

[Aaron Kaluszka]

May depend on bug 116443 since it's the same thing, but from a different vector. 

Comment 5

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

IMO, it's a dup of 116443 - same cause

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 116443 ***

Comment 7

[Aaron Kaluszka]

Reopening since bug 116443 theoretically did not fix this.  Close again if this
is not the case.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

A. Kaluszka in comment #7:
> Reopening since bug 116443 theoretically did not fix this.  Close again if this
> is not the case.

Aaron, what aspect do you consider to be unfinished / not fixed by bug 116443?

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

=> WFM per reporter