Comment Re:E-mail attachments (Score 1) 149
Wow a voice of sanity among all the other noise!
Facts to go along with this:
1. AOL users can't get a virus or trojan horse by simply opening email, they have to proactively click DOWNLOAD NOW. Then they have to click "Yes I understand that this file contains executable content and I don't know who it's from" on the little warning screen that AOL puts up for file attachments.
2. They have to double click the EXE file after downloading it to start the trouble.
3. These trojan horses almost all use a keyboard capture routine to actually get the password AS THE USER TYPES IT. How do you design software to defend against that?
4. The AOL password is not stored on the HD unless the user has "stored" the password so they don't type it in to sign on.
5. AOL works with Network Associates to create a special version for detecting Password capture trojans. (They come out with a new "extra.drv" file every so often with new virus and trojan horse definitions in it)
6. AOL is the biggest online community with a consistent interface, which makes it a large target. In other words, hackers see 15 million people all using the same interface and can write one trojan-horse hackware piece of copy and pasted code to try to get passwords for all those AOL members. Why do they do it? Why do 12 year olds do anything malicious? They need chores to do! LOL
Facts to go along with this:
1. AOL users can't get a virus or trojan horse by simply opening email, they have to proactively click DOWNLOAD NOW. Then they have to click "Yes I understand that this file contains executable content and I don't know who it's from" on the little warning screen that AOL puts up for file attachments.
2. They have to double click the EXE file after downloading it to start the trouble.
3. These trojan horses almost all use a keyboard capture routine to actually get the password AS THE USER TYPES IT. How do you design software to defend against that?
4. The AOL password is not stored on the HD unless the user has "stored" the password so they don't type it in to sign on.
5. AOL works with Network Associates to create a special version for detecting Password capture trojans. (They come out with a new "extra.drv" file every so often with new virus and trojan horse definitions in it)
6. AOL is the biggest online community with a consistent interface, which makes it a large target. In other words, hackers see 15 million people all using the same interface and can write one trojan-horse hackware piece of copy and pasted code to try to get passwords for all those AOL members. Why do they do it? Why do 12 year olds do anything malicious? They need chores to do! LOL
