Sending malicious email as a test

Question

I have set up a working SMTP relay together with MailScanner. This SMTP relay is not — and will not be — able to relay email from the outside, only local email.

Is it possible to send a malicious email with the terminal? I have googled around but could not find anything that could answer my question. For example, I want to use:

echo "{malicious-string}" | mail name@email.com

What could the "{malicious-string}" be?

There is also the GTUBE (Generic Test for Unsolicited Bulk Email) to test your spam filters: https://spamassassin.apache.org/gtube/ — gen_Eric, Sep 15 '16 at 15:11

Sven · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-15T15:12:38.727

57

Use the EICAR test virus. http://www.eicar.org/86-0-Intended-use.html

echo 'X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*' | mail

Edit: Be sure to read Michael Hampton's as well!

edited Sep 15 '16 at 15:12

answered Sep 14 '16 at 08:42

Sven

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Ineed this worked, but I discovered that my Palo Alto firewall did take care of it instead of mailscanner. Seems like mailscanner did not catch it. Thanks anyway for your answer – Orphans Sep 14 '16 at 08:58
7

It might have detected it, if it had actually been in a file attachment. e.g. `echo -n 'X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*' > ducklin.html` – Michael Hampton Sep 14 '16 at 22:10
@MichaelHampton My firewall did catch it also. So I had to psychically bypass the fw – Orphans Sep 16 '16 at 06:42

score 29 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 14 '16 at 22:13

To be sure, you should use the EICAR test virus, and attach it to the email, rather than simply putting it in the body.

echo -n 'X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*' > ducklin.docx
echo "Here is 10 million dollars" | mailx -a ducklin.docx user@example.com

Sending malicious email as a test

2 Answers2