Re: [TCLUG:15961] Internet myths

[Mike Hicks <hick0088@tc.umn.edu>]

Eric Hillman wrote:
> 
> > 2. You can get computer viruses by reading email messages. (General
> > discussion of computer virii would follow.)
> 
>   Well, you can *now*, thanks to Outlook.  But that's a problem with Outlook's
> default setup more than anything else.

Right, though there have been a few scares regarding buffer overflow
problems in header fields and things like that.

I should point out, just for historical reasons if nothing else, that it
has been possible to make people *think* that they have gotten a virus
or that there computer will explode in 10 minutes, yadda, yadda,
yadda..  Back in the day, this was done through terminal escape
sequences (ANSI color codes, VT100 drawing codes, etc.), and it can now
be done with HTML, JavaScript, ActiveX (or whatever it's called these
days), and other things.  Of course, the problem with this (and this is
probably why it doesn't happen very often), is that there are a huge
number of different mail clients out there, and most will be immune to
any particular attack

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 [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088@umn.edu ]