[22429] in bugtraq
Eudora MUA: Risky practice
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Borja Marcos)
Mon Aug 27 11:29:44 2001
Message-Id: <200108270736.f7R7aoA00586@borja.sarenet.es>
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From: Borja Marcos <borjam@sarenet.es>
To: bugtraq@securityfocus.com
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 09:36:49 +0200
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Hello,
I have observed a very risky default setting in the Eudora MUA.
Attachments received with messages are stored in a directory, where they are
left although the user erases the message. "Automatic attachment deletion"
seems to be an optional feature, while it should be the default behavior.
I think this is risky and should be changed; Windows has brought us
something great: the confusion between data and programs, and what actually
happens when "opening" a file depends on the file type.
A user deleting the attachments from the disk (for example, hundreds of
copies of Sircam) can execute one of them by accident. This deletion is
usually done from the Windows file manager, which will never ask for
confirmation before executing a file. As Windows has a joke command-line
interface, this is perhaps the only option left for the user to delete the
messages.
I know this is a Windows fault, but Qualcomm would enhance their product
changing the behavior to automatically deleting an attachment whenever a
message is deleted. Better, I think it would be better to extract an
attachment from a message if and only if the user explicitly "opens" the
attachment or saves it to disk. It would also help to avoid disk clutter.
Regards,
Borja.
