[ale] [Slightly OT] Weird request...

[joe at madewell.com (Joe Steele)]

fd0man??The Magical Floppy Man wrote:
> I just got finished setting up an e-mail server with antivirus and spam
> filtering and the like, and I want to give it a good test run to see
> what it will (and will not) let through.  I have tested it with
> "testing" viruses such as EICAR, but I want to know that it is going to
> catch *real* viruses and filter them out as it should.
> 
> Is there any way to do that?  I have had no luck finding any sort of
> collection or anything that can be used for testing such things, and I
> can understand that given the large potential for misuse.  Nonetheless,
> is there any collections that anyone knows of that contain relatively
> harmless things that I can use to test with, that aren't designed
> specifically for the purpose of testing (such as EICAR)?

I saw this site mentioned on another list once -- not sure if it's what 
you are looking for, but it claims to have 37,000 different virus 
samples available for download:

http://vx.netlux.org/

--Joe