On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, Todd Vierling wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, Curtis Maurand wrote:
: Sure they do....its called COM/DCOM/OLE/ActiveX or whatever they : want to call it this week. Its on every windows system.
No, my point was that the majority of newer trojan mail viruses don't depend on ActiveX exploits -- they simply wait, dormant, for a n00b to click on this mysterious-looking Zip Folder, and the mysterious-looking EXE inside.
It's as if the modern e-mail viruses are closer to human infections. Only the clueful are immune. 8-)
The latter is very true. My point is that the COM/DCOM/OLE/ActiveX is what allows for a script in an email message that gets executed to have access to the rest of the system, rather than executing within a protected sandbox. Of course scripts within email messages shouldn't execute at all. Once they do execute, they have access to the OLE objects on the machine. Its a security hole big enough to drive a tank through.
-- -- Curtis Maurand mailto:curtis@maurand.com http://www.maurand.com