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Subject: possible idea for dealing with malicious attachments
From: Weston Bustraan (westonitdonline.net)
Date: Fri May 05 2000 - 10:56:24 CDT

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How difficult and resource intensive would it be to just zip any incoming
attachments?

Benefits:
- - User can not run the attachment by double clicking it. They must first
   extract it. Requiring the extra step will deter a lot of people from
   clicking it, "just to see what it does".
- - Reduced traffic on the network. Instead of large Word, etc documents,
   smaller zip files are transferred.
- - Non-malicous programs/scripts would not be rejected.

Drawbacks:
- - More load on the mail server, although it would probably be similar to
   the load incurred by virus scanning each message.
- - User must have software to unzip the files. On the internet, who doesn't
   have unzipping software?
- - Viruses could still make it through if the user executed the virus after
   it had been extracted.

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=X8cO
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