On Sun, 08 Jul 2001 23:50:46 -0500, L.D. Best wrote:
> Sam,
> On Mon, 09 Jul 2001 22:57:54 -0500, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
>> Howard:
>> How can an anti-virus program scan a file for viruses *before*
>> the file is downloaded? I have never heard of any virus scanning
>> software having such a feature.
> I have ... but it is run by the ISP at the POP3 server level.
> X-AntiVirus: scanned for viruses by AMaViS 0.2.1 (http://amavis.org/)
> The above line appears in every piece of mail I download from my ISP's
> POP3. Occasionally I receive a bot-mail stating that "the X virus was
> found in e-mail addressed to you from {fill in the blank}. The message
> has been deleted.
You have mentioned in other posts that you frequently have downloaded
viruses, but none of them can affect your machine even if you tried
to run them because so far all of your viruses have been for windoze.
> Since I'm a DOSasaur, I don't appreciate having my messages deleted;
> however, all of them so far have either originated with a daemon or an
> undisclosed sender.
Even if you were a windozer, wouldn't you be able to avoid getting
infected simply by not opening whatever attachments might be included?
With windoze you have an option of saving the attachment as a file
and then scanning it. With Arachne you can't open a COM or EXE
attachment simply by clicking on its ikon. You must save it as a
file first. Windoze will let you do stupid things, such as running
a COM or EXE attachment included in an email message simply by
clicking on its ikon. You can't do this with Arachne.
Another question: How can your anti-virus software determine if
an email message contains a virus *before* the attachment has
been decoded? FPROT will not detect a virus in an email message
until *after* the infected attachment has been decoded and saved
as a file. When I scan the saved file FPROT will then report
a virus if one is present.
I have heard that windozers can get infected simply by opening the
email message and reading it, but I don't believe it. The basic
message part is only ascii text. According to my understanding,
you cannot run a virus simply by reading an ascii text file, but
there are those who will say that my understanding is wrong.
I would like to be referred to a URL written by a highly respected
and credible authority where information is presented to clear up
such misunderstandings as may exist regarding this matter. Most
people who claim to be expert authorities on viruses aren't.
Sam Heywood
-- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/
