Wednesday, February 14, 2007

e-Valentine cards could be dangerous.

Every opportunity where people send each other cards is one of those times the bad folks out there try to do their thing.Valentines day is no exception to that rule.We can all try to educate users not to click on attachments that are unexpected or from unknown senders, but how is that going to meet up in real life against the possibility of a hot date with a secret admirer ? We can try to tackle the problem with technology that scans incoming messages, removes executable content, repetitive content (spam), etc. but signature based systems will leak exploits, repetition might not always be there and the first few will be passed on regardless and perhaps worst of all, users are generally willing to go through great lengths to get their price and work around extension based filtering. I could also try to promote not sending media rich wishes what I always do. Just use normal plain text within all your emails. If everybody should do this ... Anyway, make sure to have a happy February 14th without catching one of these. BTW several parts of the world have been spammed by some problematic e-Valentine cards already, so please pay attention and don't forget to update and patch (MS critical patches) today!