Re: A Very Dangerous Worm in Windows Metafile Images (WMF)

On 3 Jan 2006 17:39:30 -0800, Winfield Hill
<Winfield_member@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Rich Grise wrote...
>>
>> The whole thing could probably be nipped in the bud, and most
>> viruses, worms, and such, if people could be taught to not do
>> their day-to-day stuff while logged in as administrator...
>
> I dunno, while XP home machines are used that way by default,
> most W2000 and XP-pro machines are not, yet they're vulnerable
> too. Perhaps that's because all execute the WMF code. BTW,
> over-writing of system files isn't required to get infected.

One of Bill's declared tenents of "trusted computing" was "safe by
default." Why does Windows default to executing .jpg files as wmf's?

Irfanview checks and warns me if the extension doesn't match the
header; Windows doesn't. Windows doesn't even allow me to turn on such
checking.

200 million lines of crap.

John



.

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