Re: netscape 4.61 recognizes file.changed-doc/xls

[dimitry () ANDRIC COM (Dimitry Andric)]

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On 2000/05/23 at 11:54 Chad Thunberg wrote:

> Do to the increasing threat of viruses, I have added procmail
> filters to mangle the .ext of attachments so users would have to
> rename the file after saving the file to disk.  This gives our
> antivirus a chance to scan the file and allows users 30secs to think
> about what they are doing.  What I have noticed is, netscape mail
> (ver 4.61) recognizes attachments that have been renamed.  We sent
> two seperate emails with attachments, one with test.doc and one with
> test.xls.  Upon receiving the email, the attachment's name was
> changed to test.1234DEFACED-DOC and test.1234DEFACED-XLS.  After
> double clicking the attachments, netscape mail gives the user the
> option of opening the file with winword.exe and excel.exe.  We also
> tested with .bat and various other .ext but only winword and excel
> associated files were
> recognized.  Can anyone else confirm or deny this?

I think Netscape looks at the MIME types which are embedded in the
mail message headers, ie "application/msword" for doc files, and
"application/vnd.ms-excel" for xls files. It then uses the Windows
registry to look for the application which handles a specific MIME
type, and prompts the user with it.

You could try to modify your procmail filters to also mangle the MIME
types of these attachments. Just make it "application/octet-stream"
or "application/x-unknown-content-type".

Cheers,
- --
Dimitry Andric <dimitry () andric com>
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