Mike wrote regarding 'Re: [OT] Worm alert' on Thu, Nov 24 at 12:38:
> > > It's being called the worst computer worm of the year -- a
> > > fast-spreading Internet threat that looks like an official e-mail from
> > > the CIA or FBI but can leave your computer wide open to intruders.
> > >
> > > The bogus e-mail claims the government has discovered you visiting
> > > "illegal" Web sites and asks you to open an attachment to answer some
> > > official questions. If you do, your computer gets infected with
> > > malware that can disable security and firewall programs and blast out
> > > similar e-mails to contacts in your address book.
> 
> Since I use Gmail, I feel safer than people browsing their mail on a
> dedicated mail program (Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.).
> 
> Does anyone have a feel for the veracity of that?

Since I use mutt on a machine with no GUI running Linux and have to go
through at least one scp/ftp operation to even get an attachment from
my email program to a machine where I can even run it, I feel safer
than people using a webmail system.  On top of that, my mail server
rejects all comon executable attachments outright, and knows how to
flag spam as spam otherwise.

How about that? ;)

If the mail says "download this and run it" then it doesn't matter what
program you're using - you can have a problem.  If the mail system
shows HTML email, there's probably a way for someone to get around any
sanitizing that might be done and run some code in your browser.  If
there's a problem with your browser (Firefox isn't immune, though it's
less dumb than IE).  I'm pretty sure that Gmail lets HTML email
through rather than converting it to plain text, so there's always a
way for it to exploit you.  I'd say that it's at least as dangerous as
Thunderbird, though both are better than Outlook/Outlook Express
(since those two use the IE rendering engine).

Just in case that wasn't a joke response...

--Danny, pretty sure that the CIA and FBI can damned well come to my
house if they need information - they're not gonna just email me. :)
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