[imp] Binary attachments given mime type text/plain. why?

[Ron Cooper]

Quoting Lord Apollyon <implist at paypc.com>:


| viral payloads and other dangerous code.  There is no reason for naked
| executable files to be exchanged via email, and if the person really
| needs to send a program binary that way, it should be ZIPPED or
| otherwisecompressed so that some evil email clients cannot covertly
| open and execute the payload.
|
| I have all 23 or so Windows executable forms blocked by my email system
| for  just this reason.  This is why after running mail sites for
| thousands  of  Windows users for over 6 years, I've yet to be forced to
| deal with a  single incident of trojan-horse/virus infection.
|

Here! Here!   I actually guage a new vendor's clue fullness based on how
they distribute their files and patches.  I find it utterly amazing that
people will entrust a binary file to be converted, transferred, converted
back again without so much as a second thought to Trojans, viruses or
even a simple checksum to verify it was received/assembled properly.

On any given day our procmail filters will send to /dev/null no less than
40 or so hostile emails that have some kind of Trojan, usually an .exe or
.vbs file.  I do think I would resign if policy changed such that I had
to accept these type of files via email.   Allowing such files is utterly
irresponsible in my view.  When you don't allow the source of the problems
entry into your system, you never have a problem.

Cheers
Ron



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