From: Markus Hitter (mah@jump-ing.de)
Date: Fri May 03 2002 - 12:44:44 EEST
Am Freitag den, 3. Mai 2002, um 10:55, schrieb Delft Spline Systems:
> Dear Markus,
>
> You have a nerve, just opening an unidentified and very
> suspicious attachment.
That's easy if you know how to do it:
1) Look for the full file name. MS Windows still identifies what
to do with a file by it's suffix. By default, the last suffix is
hidden, however. Very suspicious are double suffixes like
"picture.jpg.vbs". This file had a .txt suffix which is safe.
2) Don't double-click the attachment. Drag it to the app you
want or save it to disk, then open it with the appropriate app.
3) You can look at the mail file itsself without saving /
extracting the attachment at all.
4) All known virusses (of the past few years) work on MS Windows
or MS Office only (SCNR). There are other OS', too.
> My advise would be never to do so again: this would be a nice
> trick for a
> brand-new virus, to go disguised as "hi folks, no danger, I
> have been deleted already".
This trick won't work. No virus works without executing some code.
Secure handling of attachments isn't too hard:
1) disable all automatic execution of files, especially mail
attachments. Auto-starting CD's come to mind, too.
2) Switch extension hiding off and always use 2) of above. It's
safe and makes little extra work.
3) It's always a good idea to back up your data on a regular
base. Other pieces of your computer can fail, too.
Regards,
Markus Hitter
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://rapid.lpt.fi/rp-ml/
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