[Mimedefang] Re: Unsafe file types

[Matthew.van.Eerde at hbinc.com]

I have completely the opposite point of view.  I block anything potentially
dangerous and not commonly used.

I strip and quarantine .htm and .html files for my users rather than
scanning them for viruses.  This gives me a few false positives but protects
my network from lots of IE exploits.

I'd love to strip and quarantine .doc files but then I'd spend all day
restoring .doc files to users.

I dread the day some virus writer puts his virus in a password-protected
.zip attachment because on that day I'll have to strip and quarantine .zip
files.

I'd love to take away administrative rights from my users but then Microsoft
Office stops working.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lee Dilkie [mailto:lee at dilkie.com]
> Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 1:47 PM
> To: mimedefang at lists.roaringpenguin.com
> Subject: RE: [Mimedefang] Re: Unsafe file types
> 
> 
> > At 12:13 PM 12/1/2003, WBrown at e1b.org wrote:
> > >ACK!!! You are more right than you know.  I renamed a DOC 
> file on my
> > >windoze box to RTF and it opened right up in Word.  Then i
> > noticed my fat
> > >fingers entered the extension as .rth, and it still opened
> > in Word.  How
> > >F***'ED UP is that??
> 
> I'd like to voice another view altogether here.
> 
> On my mail server, I don't block any attachment's based on 
> file extension. I
> figure that the whole purpose of email is to communicate and 
> I do my best to
> help that. Blocking perfectly legitimate email that's 
> carrying a "dangerous"
> attachment extension is a bit silly. "Dangerous" is in the eyes of the
> beholder. I'm willing to do virus scanning of attachments on 
> the server but
> after that, as far as I'm concerned, it's up to the user to 
> have an up to
> date virus scanner and to use the wetware between the ears 
> when opening file
> attachments. If they screw up their computer after all that, 
> well, it's not
> my problem.
> 
> My problem is trying to weed out the non-legitimate email in the first
> place. That is, spam and email's containing known virus's. 
> Blindly blocking
> attachments based on file extensions is going too far IMHO.
> 
> my 2 cents,
> 
> -lee
> 
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