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To: The Osprey who wrote (2806)	10/21/1998 10:54:00 PM
From: Apex	Respond to of 4201

""The logo below could read "where somethings always brewing"" ...and the motto could read "be safe and happy" A note or two on viruses. ========== Borrowed from Fridrik Skulason #reply-5865413 > Microsoft Word will only open a text file. That claim is just plain silly. Of course Word will open Word .DOC files too. If you receive a Word .DOC file as an attachment, many mail readers will just show it as an icon...click on it, and the program will launch Word (or Wordpad or Word Viewer, depending on the configuration) to view it. The point that I have been trying to make is that under two specific sets of circumstances Word may be run automatically, so if the .DOC attachment is infected, you will have a live virus on the system. > For a virus to spread, it must be executed. As I keep saying, running Word to view an infected Word .DOC fill will execute the virus, resulting in an infected system > Reading a mail message does not execute the mail message. As I keep saying, under two specific sets of circumstances it will. Like it or not, that's just the way it is. > Trojans and viruses have been found as executable attachments to mail messages, but they must be extracted and executed to do any harm. Normally, yes. That's the whole point. There are situations where Word may be run automatically which is the problem. > Reading e-mail, using typical mail agents, can not activate malicious code delivered in or with the message. Eudora is safe, as well as many other mail readers. The potential for automatically activating viruses only exists in Microsoft Exchange and cc:mail - whether you consider them "typical" or not is irrelevant. >Data files can't wreak havoc on your computer, only an executable program file can do that. That's correct, as long as the definition of "executable file" is extended to cover Word .DO? files and Excel .XL? files as well, and when the first viruses infecting such files appeared, many people were caught by surprise, as they had (incorrectly) thought of those files as containing only non-executable data. ==== ...and #reply-6000787 Just a minor bit of virus-related trivia.....this forum is a bit lacking in activity :-) We can group currently-known viruses as follows (rough estimate) 32000 DOS viruses 2700 Word viruses 1000 MBR/DBR viruses 300 Excel viruses 100 DOS BAT viruses 100 Windows viruses 10 Access viruses 3 Java viruses 3 Linux viruses 1 AMI Pro virus In addition there are over 1000 viruses for the Macintosh, Atari, Apple II, Archimedes, Amiga etc...