Lahey Support
08-15-2003, 01:24 AM
Michael Milgram wrote:
> Hi everyone:
>
> So I'm paranoid. Some of you reported that your virus checkers screamed
> about a virus when you opened your email today, some of you got no
> warning. I got no warning.
>
> So I filed the message in a special folder, and labelled it
> "INFECTED!!!"
>
> Then I reasoned that if Norton Anti-Virus version 5.0, for which I paid
> good dollars not-so-long-ago didn't pick up a virus, either the virus
> was a new one, Norton Anti-Virus doesn't work, or maybe its not a virus
> after all - just a file with pretensions. In the first two cases, the
> Norton people should want to know. So I shipped off my file to Symantec
> for a definitive analysis.
>
> Folks - we've been had. Our virus is not a virus. That's what Symantec
> says (see below). Does that make you feel confident?
>
> Mike Milgram
>
> PS. Does anyone know how to save an .EXE email attachment without first
> attempting to open it and praying that you will be presented with a
> SAVE/OPEN warning dialogue? I'm not foolhardy enough to try that, but
> as long as the attachment remains a text file - well, its obviously not
> harmful. Symantec told me so.
>
Norton Antivirus 5 says this is a virus, after I extracted it from the file
with
Netscape (4.7) Messenger. Just clicking on the .EXE link in the message
saved it without executing it. No virus scanner I know of will find a virus
while it is still encoded as an attachment. Norton autoprotect, McAfee
VShield, etc. will find these upon download if they are properly configured,
and if you use an e-mail program such as Eudora that decodes attachments
automatically. E-mail programs such as Netscape Messenger that leave the
attachment encoded will prevent antivirus software from detecting the virus.
--jeff ryman
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> Hi everyone:
>
> So I'm paranoid. Some of you reported that your virus checkers screamed
> about a virus when you opened your email today, some of you got no
> warning. I got no warning.
>
> So I filed the message in a special folder, and labelled it
> "INFECTED!!!"
>
> Then I reasoned that if Norton Anti-Virus version 5.0, for which I paid
> good dollars not-so-long-ago didn't pick up a virus, either the virus
> was a new one, Norton Anti-Virus doesn't work, or maybe its not a virus
> after all - just a file with pretensions. In the first two cases, the
> Norton people should want to know. So I shipped off my file to Symantec
> for a definitive analysis.
>
> Folks - we've been had. Our virus is not a virus. That's what Symantec
> says (see below). Does that make you feel confident?
>
> Mike Milgram
>
> PS. Does anyone know how to save an .EXE email attachment without first
> attempting to open it and praying that you will be presented with a
> SAVE/OPEN warning dialogue? I'm not foolhardy enough to try that, but
> as long as the attachment remains a text file - well, its obviously not
> harmful. Symantec told me so.
>
Norton Antivirus 5 says this is a virus, after I extracted it from the file
with
Netscape (4.7) Messenger. Just clicking on the .EXE link in the message
saved it without executing it. No virus scanner I know of will find a virus
while it is still encoded as an attachment. Norton autoprotect, McAfee
VShield, etc. will find these upon download if they are properly configured,
and if you use an e-mail program such as Eudora that decodes attachments
automatically. E-mail programs such as Netscape Messenger that leave the
attachment encoded will prevent antivirus software from detecting the virus.
--jeff ryman
----------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send to [address removed] the following
as the first and only line of the message body:
unsubscribe fortran
----------------------------------------------------------