Strange Email

Huwge · Feb 26, 2006

Hi,
Recieved a strange email. I'm using OE. All that shows in the inbox is the envelope....nothing else.

The email says Sender is unspecified, To... none.... no subject and email is blank.

No attachments

NOD and Ewidio show it as clean.

Any ideas ?

Thanks in advance

Bubba · Feb 26, 2006

Other than the KB below concerning NIS and OE6....I don't know

The sender's name appears as Sender Unspecified or Unknown when you open an e-mail message in Outlook Express 6.0

MSKB 870642 said:

SYMPTOMS
When you open an e-mail message in Microsoft Outlook Express 6.0, the e-mail sender's name appears as Sender Unspecified or Unknown.
CAUSE
This problem occurs if the Norton Internet Security software is installed on your computer.
Click to expand...

Cochise · Feb 26, 2006

I haven't got Norton and I have had these 'Blanks' on occasion.....I think they are just that....Blanks...........Just delete 'em Mate and carry on.......I've never found them to be ''Sinister'..

Cochise, Deleting in Dewsbury...

Eldar · Feb 26, 2006

I subscribe to the LockerGnome newsletter and this was a question sent in by a reader. Apparently the "blank email problem" is a fairly wide-spread issue.

I have been getting a lot of empty e-mails with no sender’s name or subject in the header. Is this possibly a new attempt by someone to deliver a virus or more likely someone that doesn’t know how to send e-mail?
The ‘blank e-mail’ trend that seems to be growing can be attributed to a number of possible causes. One likely cause is from a spammer that is operating an ‘address probe’ process that simply sends a blank message to a mailserver to see if it will accept it. If it does, the automated system makes note of the address and adds it to a list of validated addresses. If it’s rejected, then it knows not to send any more spam to that address. Another possibility is an automated spam attempt that has the recipient addresses but none of the other information (including the spam itself!) made it into the message because of poor scripting or coding.

All large-scale spam operations work with automated processes and much of their automation is derived from the process of trial and error in an effort to beat out spam filters. Another very likely cause is that a malicious 'worm' with a poorly coded 'payload' (which is the resulting actions after a successful attack) has infected a computer that has your e-mail address in its address book and is inadvertently sending these blank e-mail messages as a result.

The majority of known e-mail worms and viruses have very poorly written routines that often break down in the middle, which prevents the intended malicious activity from ever completing properly. There are a handful of known virus and worm attacks (most notably the W32.Beagle family) that can use a blank message as a delivery vehicle, but they are always accompanied by an attachment (usually an .exe file) that is required to be opened in order to complete the attack.

Many large corporate e-mail servers as well as many ISPs will strip away known malicious file attachments from messages before delivering them to their users, which would result in a message to the recipient with no subject, no sender, no message, and no attachment. Depending upon how your mailserver handles this situation, you may or may not get a notification about a stripped file attachment, so you may want to contact your administrator or ISP to find out if this is a possibility.

There is yet another more technical possibility which has to do with the format of the message. E-mail programs that are capable of displaying HTML messages (much like a Web site) can be fooled into running a script in the background of a message while displaying what appears to be nothing to the user.

These scripts, a.k.a. 'web bugs,' can notify the spammer that not only did you receive the blank message, but you also tried to read it, which makes you an even more desirable target for them. All of these possibilities should be a wake up call to lazy e-mail senders that don't bother to put anything into the subject line; your mail is now even more likely to be ignored or deleted before it's opened!
Click to expand...

I hope this helps a bit.

Devil's Advocate · Feb 26, 2006

For what's it worth, sometimes the blank email can be a result of some unexpected interaction between antispam filter proxy/ your antivirus email scanning proxy and the mail server.

For me it occurs only with one particular mail account, every time i query it, it will generate one blank email first. I could reproduce the result every time I querried the mail server so I doubt it's some spammer or worm or whatever.

The problem disappears if i drop my spam filter from the chain.

Didn't borther to look deeper to see why this was happening.

Huwge · Feb 27, 2006

Thanks for all the replies much appreciated

Eldar · Feb 27, 2006

Devil's Advocate said:

For what's it worth, sometimes the blank email can be a result of some unexpected interaction between antispam filter proxy/ your antivirus email scanning proxy and the mail server.
Click to expand...

Yes, I remember those problems pretty well. Had some experience with my previous spam filter modifying the message incorrectly which produced incoming blank emails.

For me it occurs only with one particular mail account, every time i query it, it will generate one blank email first. I could reproduce the result every time I querried the mail server so I doubt it's some spammer or worm or whatever.
Click to expand...

FWIW Not sure, but it could be a problem with the time-out or even your account settings.

Huwge said:

Thanks for all the replies much appreciated
Click to expand...

My pleasure Huwge.

Devil's Advocate · Feb 28, 2006

Eldar said:

Yes, I remember those problems pretty well. Had some experience with my previous spam filter modifying the message incorrectly which produced incoming blank emails. FWIW Not sure, but it could be a problem with the time-out or even your account settings. My pleasure Huwge.
Click to expand...

Yes that too. But I'm pretty sure it isn't a spammer or whatever dangerous sounding sounding thing you quoted in your response.

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