[68057] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Possibly yet another MS mail worm
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Curtis Maurand)
Mon Mar 1 10:39:05 2004
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 10:38:15 -0500 (EST)
From: Curtis Maurand <curtis@maurand.com>
To: Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.58.0403010931170.690@server.duh.org>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, Todd Vierling wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, Curtis Maurand wrote:
>
> : Sure they do....its called COM/DCOM/OLE/ActiveX or whatever they
> : want to call it this week. Its on every windows system.
>
> No, my point was that the majority of newer trojan mail viruses don't depend
> on ActiveX exploits -- they simply wait, dormant, for a n00b to click on
> this mysterious-looking Zip Folder, and the mysterious-looking EXE inside.
>
> It's as if the modern e-mail viruses are closer to human infections. Only
> the clueful are immune. 8-)
The latter is very true.
My point is that the COM/DCOM/OLE/ActiveX is what allows for a script in
an email message that gets executed to have access to the rest of the
system, rather than executing within a protected sandbox. Of course
scripts within email messages shouldn't execute at all. Once they do
execute, they have access to the OLE objects on the machine. Its a
security hole big enough to drive a tank through.
>
>
--
--
Curtis Maurand
mailto:curtis@maurand.com
http://www.maurand.com
