Re: Spyware / Adware
On 1 Sep 2004, s. keeling wrote:
> Incoming from Daniel Pittman:
>>
>> *Most* mail clients under Unix are better written than to do that, but
>
> Even mutt (a terrific MUA) _can be told_ to automatically "handle"
> MIME types for you, if you want. It just depends what's in your
> /.mailcap, and that can contain any sort of command you can imagine.
*nod* Very true. Certain other mail viewing tools, including metamail,
will just invoke whatever command happens to be in mailcap for a MIME
type.
> If you want it to mangle your user data when it runs across a
> malicious png, it can do that. That doesn't mean it has to. It only
> means you have that option. There's nothing inherently wrong with an
> MUA being able to do this.
I don't mean to suggest there is. I also don't agree with the OP who
claimed that Linux was "immune" to this sort of error; automatic code
execution can cause Linux as much pain as Windows, but usually doesn't
due to better security practices.
Daniel
--
We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time:
premature optimization is the root of all evil.
-- Donald E. Knuth, _Structured Programming with go to Statements_
(Computing Surveys, Vol. 6, No. 4, December 1974)
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