Re: Possibly yet another MS mail worm

[Curtis Maurand <curtis () maurand com>]

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. 


>

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--
Curtis Maurand
mailto:curtis () maurand com
http://www.maurand.com