Strange virus-laden email returned, but i didn't send it
 

Hi all. I don't think this is dangerous, just a little puzzling. I couldn't find anything by searching the fora.
I just got a mailer-daemon returned email, returned because of a suspected virus, but i didn't send the email in the first place, or at least there's nothing in my outbox or sent folder to suggest that. I'm using evolution 1.4.4 with a university (warwick) email acount. I'm guessing either someone's found a vulnerability in evolution allowing them to pull off the kind of automatic email forwarding that causes havoc with MS outlook, or someones cracked into my webmail, or even simpler someone's managed to send an email that appears to be coming from me. Can anyone advise which, if any, seems likeliest? And what i might do about it?
Thanks a lot security boffins, i'm woefully ignorant in this area.
-bbp

The majority of recent viruses and worms on the net use mass-mailing engines which spoof (forge) the from header of the email. Could be myDoom/SCO.A making it's rounds, but rumour has it that when it scans the system for email addresses, it intentionally avoids email addresses that use the .edu suffix.

Nothing you can really do about it, that's kind of the point... you never know who's box is truly infected, so it makes sending hate mail to the sender pointless. In fact it's likely that the person in the From header (you) isn't even infected. So when the mail is bounced by their mail server, it automatically notifies the sender, which is actually the spoofed address instead of the infected system.

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks man, i thought it most likely it hadn't actually ever come near my box. I never got the original email, just the mailer daemon denial, and like you said, the person in the From header is often uninfected. If there's nothing i can do its all good, thanks for setting my mind at rest.