Re: AppleScript and Email clients
Re: AppleScript and Email clients
- Subject: Re: AppleScript and Email clients
- From: garbanzito <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 20:39:20 -0700
at 2002 01 07, 20:27 -0500, they whom i call Xandra Lee wrote:
Huh??
How is it possible for a text-only eMail App to activate a virus?
not through "conventional means" (as in Word macros, or
causing a script to run), but it is possible.
for instance, hackers have found bugs in some programs where
data (such as the text of an email) will be interpreted as
part of the code of the program under special circumstances.
then the hacker finds a way to set up these special
circumstances, and uses them to insert a virus.
this may seem far-fetched, but it has happened. it may seem
even farther fetched for an email program to have this kind
of bug, but it is true that email clients interpret the text
of the email (such as headers, encoding, etc.), perhaps
something like an extra-long or malformed header could put
the email client into an error state which could be
exploited.
--
steve harley email@hidden