Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 01:48:25 -0400 From: Derek Glidden <dglidden@geocities.com> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg3517$foo@default> Subject: The "EMail Virus" hoax once again
I see that it is still lurking out there someplace. Sorry to beat a
dead horse, but I hate to see this kind of misinformation spread.
This is the plain deal: There is *no way* that a computer virus can
attach itself to your EMail and cause itself to execute *simply from
your reading that EMail* !!! Period. End-of-story. No way.
The best that it can manage is to send itself as *an attachment* that
would then be executed by the unsuspecting recipient, and then "do the
dirty deed." However, there is nothing to stop me from simply writing a
program that will flat-out erase your hard drive and sending it to you
as an attachment. It's not a virus, by the commonly accpeted definition
of a computer virus, (i.e. it doesn't stay resident in memory, it
doesn't replicate itself onto other media, etc.) but it winds up with
the same alleged result simply because you executed a program without
knowing what was in it beforehand.
The only possible way I can see this kind of virus actually being a
threat is if you are using a mailer that will automatically open
attachments of a certain type. If this is the case, if this software
even exists (probably not, *because of* the safety hole) you deserve
what you get for allowing your mail software to automatically execute
any binary application that gets mailed to you without checking first.
"Better safe than sorry" is a good motto, but in this case, it's
overkill. There simply is no way a textual EMail message can in any
way, shape or form, directly harm your hard drive. Again, sorry to beat
that dead horse, but that horse just won't die...
-- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Derek Glidden http://www.illusionary.com Illusionary.com Home of the Pagan Resource Site Web development, database, graphics and general plumbing Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP (Say No to NT!)
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