Demanding your clients to change extensions from .zip to .txt for mail attachments

anti-virusattachmentemail

A company we are working with has a few ridiculous security measures. One of them goes like this:

You cannot e-mail us .zip files. If you want to transmit a .zip file, rename it to .txt.

IMHO, there is no good reason for this. I can only see two reasons to do such a thing:

Their employees are idiots and click on every zip file, and every .exe/.vbs/britney.jpg.com file in the zipfile. By only telling the smart people to use the rename-to-.txt files trick, the stupid people pose no threat. Actually, I like this explanation.
There is a known bug in the email software which auto-opens .zipfiles and gets infected. Renaming prevents the software to do this.

Other than that, when the .txt arrives, their user still has to re-rename it to .zip and then we are back to square 1: we have a potentially unsafe zipfile.

Am I missing something? Is there any reason why this could be a recommended practice?

Best Answer

IMHO no, at least I can't think of any good reason. Actually, it doesn't increase security, but decreases it. They should implement a good virus scanner at the mail gateway (and on the client workstations) and with this, mostly eliminate the zip threat. After that, if they manage to educate their users that they shouldn't open files they didn't expect and, when in doubt, ask for confirmation from the sender, that's about all they can do without just removing all zip attachments at the gateway.

Related Solutions

Iis – How to format a text file for IIS Mailroot Pickup so that it sends an e-mail with attachments

The formatting for files to be read by SMTP can be a little tricky. Be careful with white space and semicolons because the file reader is likely not going to be very forgiving.

Try the following text file, which is a message with 3 attachments. The first attachment is plain ASCII text and will be read as if it is the message body. The other attachments will read as actual file attachments.

From: <bmccormack@mydomain.com>
To: <scott@mydomain.com>
Subject: Hello World!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
  boundary="Attached"


--Attached
Content-Type: text/plain;
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hey Scott, I think I've got it figured out.  See the attached file.
--Attached
Content-Type: text/plain;
  name="TestAttached.txt"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
  filename="TestAttached.txt"

VGhpcyBpcyBhbiBleGFtcGxlIG9mIGJhc2U2NCBlbmNvZGVkIHRleHQu
--Attached
Content-Type: text/plain;
  name="SourceCode.txt"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
  filename="SourceCode.txt"
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--Attached--

Linux Cron – How to Change “From:” Field for Emails from Cron

I don't think you can change the FROM address, (someone should add a MAILFROM option).

You can do something like this though to achieve a similar result:

* * * * * /path/to/script 2>&1 | mail -s "Output of /path/to/script" toaddress@example.com -- -r "fromaddress@example.com" -F"Full Name of sender"

All output is piped to the mail command so the MAILTO variable isn't used at all.

The to address would need to be set but you may be able to use $MAILTO variable. The -- sets the rest of the options to be sendmail options so you can use the -r and and -F options.

-s is the subject

-r is the reply address

-F is the Full name of the sender (makes it look nice in email clients)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Iis – How to format a text file for IIS Mailroot Pickup so that it sends an e-mail with attachments

Linux Cron – How to Change “From:” Field for Emails from Cron

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