A Conversation for How to Avoid Computer Viruses
FIlename extensions
Caveman, Evil Unix Sysadmin, betting shop operative, and SuDoku addict (Its an odd mix, but someone has to do it) Started conversation Jul 4, 2000
I still find it hard to beleive that Windows PC's place such a high level of trust in the name of a file. Try saving a text file as something.COM and see what happens when you double-click on it. (Save your work first!).
With so much relying on the Three Letter Acronym (TLA) stuck on the end of a file, it's not suprising that when Microsoft tried to hide those details from users by hiding filename extensions, it was only a matter of time before someone wrote a virus called something.TXT.vbs, fooling the casual observer into letting windows automatically choose how to open it.
When is windows going to grow up and decide what type a file is by _looking_inside_it_ - Point the unix 'file' command at any DOS file, and with a reasonably up to date /etc/magic database, it can generally I.D. most common dos files; for instance:
setupslt.exe: MS Windows PE 32-bit Intel 80386 GUI executable
setver.exe: MS-DOS executable (EXE)
smartdrv.exe: MS-DOS executable (EXE), OS/2 or MS Windows
sndrec32.exe: MS Windows PE 32-bit Intel 80386 GUI executable
Red Blocks.bmp: PC bitmap data, Windows 3.x format, 54 x 96 x 4
Sandstone.bmp: PC bitmap data, Windows 3.x format, 256 x 256 x 4
Setup.bmp: PC bitmap data, Windows 3.x format, 640 x 480 x 1
Jim: Annoyed unix hacker, forced to use windows at work.
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FIlename extensions
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