In a message dated 10/2/02 1:45:01 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected]
writes:
<< Well, my virus checker didn't spot it. Probably it needs to be updated.
I read the message, but did nothing about the attachment.
Then, after reading the warnings, I deleted that message alltogether.
Am I infected ? I used Mozilla to read the mail, so if the virus relies
on security exposures of Outlook, I should be safe.
Any advice based on direct experience on this ? >>
Yes, you probably are safe, Alberto. There are only two ways for that file
to cause damage.
One way is if the recipient has HTML rendering enabled, on an e-mail client
that permits the IFRAME tag to work. The code in the body of the message
causes the file to execute in the background and infect the user's machine.
Any e-mail client that has HTML rendering turned off (which you can do in
Outlook, though "off" should really be the default), or one which does not
implement the full HTML standard (Mozilla and Netscape, for example, plus the
AOL e-mail client), or one which does not implement HTML at all, will only
show the file as an attachment.
The second way the file could cause damage, even on non-HTML-enabled e-mail
clients, is if the recipient downloads it, ignores the .pif extension, and
tries to open it. Then it is free to do its nefarious work.
73,
John
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