[61039] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Email virus protection
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Howe)
Thu Aug 21 13:10:45 2003
From: "Dave Howe" <DaveHowe@gmx.co.uk>
To: "Email List: nanog" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 18:07:26 +0100
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Crist Clark wrote:
> Unless your AV software has a clue, like most do, and unzips archives
> and see what's inside.
which is ideal for virus scanning, but not for blanket-blocking of email.
A zipped archive containing an executable cannot (unless something has
changed that I don't know about) be automatically opened by any mail
client - the user must make a deliberate attempt to open the archive then
exectute the attachment (although the actual extraction can be performed
automatically by many decompression utilities if you double-click an
executable or document inside its browser)
there is of course no allowing for the stupidity of users - but if you
have a stupid enough user you could induce him to bypass any protection
anyhow.
