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Notepad popups in Internet Explorer and Outlook

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard M. Smith)
Tue Aug 5 18:30:43 2003

From: "Richard M. Smith" <rms@computerbytesman.com>
To: "BUGTRAQ@SECURITYFOCUS. COM" <BUGTRAQ@securityfocus.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 14:57:47 -0400
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Hi,

Do Notepad popups represent a security risk or are they simply another
way for spammers and marketers to annoy us? Because of a design flaw in
Internet Explorer, Notepad popup windows can be displayed from an HTML
email message or Web page regardless of browser security settings. In
addition, Notepad popups can access files on a hard disk, possibilly
causing stability problems in a Windows saystem. 

For more details, see: 

  http://www.computerbytesman.com/security/notepadpopups.htm

Question:  What kind of operating system allows an email message to
automatically start up a text editor to change a system file?

Richard M. Smith
http://www.ComputerBytesMan.com






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