Klarinet Archive - Posting 000008.txt from 1998/09

From: Lee Hickling <hickling@-----.Net>
Subj: [kl] Attachments
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 09:31:28 -0400

Mark's post about attachments is right on the money. In addition to wasting
bandwidth, they can also contain malicious code. Here's an example of one
that is apparently only a risk to users of the free HotMail service,
excerpted from a story today on Ziff-Davis's e-mag AnchorDesk. HotMail has
been the target of malware writers before.

>The latest is a "Trojan horse" -- a malicious program that tricks users
out of their >passwords by faking a "timed-out" page in this case. This
most recent bug is >transmitted via an email attachment; the problems
fixed last week involved code >sent within the body of a message and were
addressed by blocking out certain >content -- such as Java and JavaScript
-- from incoming messages. The latest >breach apparently slips through
those filters.

By the way, AnchorDesk is one of the hippest and most useful high-tech news
e-zines. Its URL is

http://www4.zdnet.com/anchordesk/

Lee Hickling <hickling@-----.net>

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