Closed Bug 241894 Opened 20 years ago Closed 5 years ago

Infinite dialog box from antivirus software when viral attachment found in mailbox

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Migration, defect)

x86
Windows XP
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

People

(Reporter: kchristo, Unassigned)

References

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421

When importing Eudora (5.2) mailboxes, my Norton Antivirus client detected a few
of the attachments as viral, thereby placing them in quarentine (and
inaccessible to the Mozilla import).  The import displays one error message
reporting that the file could not be found, then an infinite stream of "could
not open file %0D%" (I don't remember the exact symbol, but it was a
four-character placeholder name).  Infinite stream := I close the dialog box and
another immediately replaces it, thereby rendering Mail unusable (the dialog box
is modal).

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have Eudora mailbox containing message with virus
2. Import mailbox
3. Allow Norton Antivirus to detect virus on access and quarentine
4. Wait for the dialog boxes

Actual Results:  
Undismissable dialog boxes.  I clicked OK dozens of times, tried closing the box
with the X in the corner - more came up.  Mail could not be closed except by
using End Task within the windows task manager.  This aborts the WHOLE process,
and forces me to restart the import.

Expected Results:  
Should abort that particular attachment - since after the Antivirus steps in the
file no longer exists, the message should be imported without the attachment.

Import works fine if the file is not present - the failure is only when the file
is initially present, but disappears during the attempt to open.

Workaround: manually delete all suspected virus files (non-trivial!).  After
this, import works fine.
Product: MailNews → Core
I get very similar behavior each time a message with a viral attachment shows up
in my mailbox.  The message from Norton is something along the lines of "Access
Denied" when it attempts to "Clean" (probably delete) the INBOX file.

Granted, I don't want to see some infinite loop of Norton deleteing the INBOX
file and Thunderbird replacing it from my IMAP server, but I believe Windows XP
now supports some sort of Antivirus registry & API so that programs (and even
Windows Explorer) can pass new files to an arbitrary antivirus program for
scanning and possibly deletion.  It would be nice if Thunderbird could
automatically pass new emails & new attachments (separately so that only the
attachment may be deleted?) to any installed virus scanners for scanning and
possibly deletion.
Oh, it seems like I can sometimes workaround this but by deleting offending
emails and compacting the INBOX, but sometimes it seems like I need to quit
Thunderbird and wait.  It is possible that some of the warning windows are
queued and that only the compaction was necesssary.  When I have quit
Thunderbird, I have still had to quickly click "OK"  for several minutes before
the dialogs stop appearing.  Don't know if this is because Thunderbird hasn't
really quit or the dialogs are queued.
Added myself to CC list.

This bug should also be reassigned from product "Core" to "Thunderbird" as well,
but I don't have sufficient privileges.  The reporter, Kevin, or a sufficiently
privileged member of the development team needs to change this.  

The component should also be changed from "MailNews:Import" to
"MailNews:Security" as I think this is a more general issue of playing nice with
virus scanners as opposed to specific to the original reporter's import of a
Eudora mailbox, but I ran into the same Bugzilla privilege issue.

The summary should be changed similarly to the component.  My suggestion was:
"Infinite dialog box from antivirus software when viral attachment found in
mailbox", but I ran into the privilege issue again.
Kevin: please make the above adjustments and vote for this issue.  The
combination might get it more attention.
Component: MailNews: Import → General
Product: Core → Thunderbird
Summary: Infinite dialog box when importing viral attachment → Infinite dialog box from antivirus software when viral attachment found in mailbox
Version: Trunk → unspecified
Bug 116443 deals with making AV and Moz/TB play nicely together. You may want to
add yourselves to the CC list for that bug.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Depends on: 116443
Ever confirmed: true
Bug 116443 causes each message to be saved to a temp file before being copied to
the mbox, giving the AV software a chance to delete it while it is isolated from
the other messages.  Not sure that solves the original reporter's import
problem, but the same trick should work if the temp file creation wasn't
inserted in the correct location.
Moving to Migration...
Assignee: nobody → mscott
Component: General → Migration
*** Bug 256034 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
QA Contact: migration
Assignee: mscott → nobody

Thunderbird no longer has an import from Eudora, so closing the bug in Eudora import

Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 5 years ago
Resolution: --- → INCOMPLETE
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