Information on E-mail Contact with the Head Office of the Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture (BMUKK)

• Introduction
• Which precautionary measures have been implemented?
• Further information

Introduction

Due to the rapid increase in virus attacks and unsolicited mass e-mail (SPAM), it has become inevitable for e-mails sent from external addresses to the head office to be checked as to their admissibility and plausibility by means of technical measures and, if need be, for their delivery to be denied.

Thanks to constantly updated security mechanisms, the Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture (BMUKK) has so far been spared problems in this respect.

In order to be able to guarantee faultless mail traffic with the BMUKK also in future, we have compiled some information for you:

All measures have been agreed with the employees’ representatives.

Notice: The restrictions listed below only apply when receiving external e-mail. E-mail exchanged within the head office or e-mail sent to an external address from the head office is not subject to any screening (with the exception of blocked file attachments).

Which precautionary measures have been implemented?

Measures have been implemented both for the mail itself and for any attachments. All regulations are based on standardised recommendations. Like other Internet “standards”, the standards for e-mail are laid down in so-called "Requests for Comments" (RFCs). RFCs can be called up via the "Internet Engineering Task Force" (IETF), for instance.

Reverse Lookup

The bm:bwk mail server only accepts mail from mail sending servers whose IP address has been assigned a name, in the same way as letters by anonymous senders are not accepted. In EDP language, this is called “Reverse Lookup” or “PTR Record Entry“. If this entry is missing in the sender’s DNS, the BMUKK mail server cannot recognise the e-mail as being sent from an officially registered server and rejects it. The sender receives an error message, the text of which varies according to the mail software used. The time span after which the error message is received also varies according to sender and may take several days.

If you are the sender of an e-mail and are affected by this measure, then please contact your EDP colleague in charge and show him or her this information. He or she should then make sure that the missing DNS entry is made by your Internet provider (you can find information on how to do that in RFC 1912, section 2.1).

SPAM

Spam in the wider sense is a collective term used for unsolicited, annoying messages in e-mail format and disturbs communication.

The bm:bwk is using a spam filter programme. Mail that is recognised as spam is deleted without substitution. For security reasons, no entry is made in the protocol files, nor does the recipient receive a message.

False positive
Under rare circumstances it may happen that a legitimate, valid e-mail is erroneously classified as SPAM and is rejected. In order to prevent an e-mail message from being lost in this way, the sender receives a message with the following text: “Ihre Nachricht mit dem Betreff …. wurde vom Mailsystem zurückgewiesen. Your message with the subject …. is being rejected by the mail host.“

As the sender, you have two possibilities how to react in such a case:

Reformulate your e-mail, so that it does not contain anymore offensive key words, or add the content of your e.mail as a file attachment to your e-mail.

File attachments
File attachments which may contain potentially dangerous programs (viruses), are blocked for security reasons. They are blocked exclusively on the basis of the file name ending.

This concerns files of one of the following types of files:

*.ade *.adp *.asd *.bas *.bat *.ceo *.chm *.cmd *.com *.cpl *.crt *.exe *.hlp *.hta *.inf *.ins *.isp *.js *.jse *.lnk *.mde *.msc *.msi *.msp *.mst *.pcd *.pif *.reg *.scr *.sct *.shb *.shs *.swf *.url *.vb *.vbe *.vbs *.wsc *.wsf *.wsh

Microsoft Access project extension Microsoft Access project von Word erstellte Dateien, die Makros immer ausführen Microsoft Visual Basic class module Batch file Virus Compiled HTML Help file Microsoft Windows NT Command script Microsoft MS-DOS program Control Panel extension Security certificate Program Help file HTML program Setup Information Internet Naming Service Internet Communication settings JScript file Jscript Encoded Script File Shortcut MDE database Microsoft Common Console document Microsoft Windows Installer package Microsoft Windows Installer patch Microsoft Visual Test source files Photo CD image, Microsoft Visual compiled script Shortcut to MS-DOS program Registration entries Screen saver Windows Script Component Shortcut into a document Shell Scrap Object Macromedia Shockwave File Internet shortcut VBScript file VBScript encoded script file VBScript file Windows Script Component Windows Script file Windows Script Host Settings file

If a file type from the above list is recognised, both the sender and the recipient receive a message, and the file attachment is removed from the e-mail.

Virus check

All incoming e-mail as well as all file attachments are checked for viruses by various scanners. If a virus is found, it is automatically removed and the sender is informed.

Restrictions

External e-mail is accepted only if its size does not exceed 20 MB (MegaByte, including attachments).

Further information

As the recipient should not be in any doubt as to the correctness and authenticity of your mail, we recommend you design your mail as follows:

• Observe the restrictions listed above.
  
• Use a sensible and meaningful subject.
  
• Write the content of your mail directly into the mail text.
  
• Use separate programmes such as WinWord for composing mail only if you are sending a document that is already available in this format or should be dealt with in this format.
  Do not leave the mail text empty in this case either, but at least hint at the content.
  
• Sending fun programs is not target-oriented and makes the recipient uncertain.
  
• We kindly ask you not to send chain letters of any kind, but to delete them.

Fake sender details

Please note that many computer viruses (worms) which spread themselves via e-mail have wrong sender addresses in the “from:” field. You may therefore get replies to e-mails which you have never sent. Most e-mail clients (e.g. MS Outlook or Netscape) offer you the possibility of viewing the headers of e-mail received and thus to find out the real sender.

Please address any further questions to

Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture
Bankgasse 9
A-1014 Vienna
IT-Koordination@bmbwk.gv.at
tel.: ++43 - 1- 53120 / 2705

Geändert am 28.02.2007