Subject: Re: Mailing executables

From: qman@lor501 (dave)
Date: 12 Nov 1996 08:55:21 -0500

Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]> writes:

>On 9 Nov 1996 [email-masked] wrote:

>> I was just wondering if there is anyway to send an executable through pine 
>> so that when the receiver goes to read it, the executable launches. I am 
>> not planning on doing anything evil, i am just curious

>    I am not aware of any way to do this, but even if there were, it is
>an extremely bad idea.  It is far worse than the desire of some people
>to put control characters in an email to cause special visual effects on
>the recipient's terminal, which is already a bad idea.

The easiest  way  to do this  (at least  on unix) is  a program called
"uuencode."  But, this way assumes  that the reciever has uudecode and
knows how to use it.

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From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 10:55:03 -0500

On 12 Nov 1996 qman@lor501 wrote:

> >    I am not aware of any way to do this, [...]

    uuencode may certainly be used to send an executable through the
mail -- I have done that myself -- but that is not what the original
inquiry was about.  uuencode does not "launch" the executable: it just
sits there, so to speak, waiting for the recipient to do something with
it.  Getting an executable to begin execution automatically when a
recipient reads mail is an unbelievably awful notion that makes me
shudder even to think about it.  Fortunately, there is no blanket way
to accomplish it, with Pine or any other mailer, that I know of, and
uuencode has nothing to do with what the original writer was asking
about.

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
Home Page:  http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

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From: Michael Warner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 14:19:43 GMT

> uuencode has nothing to do with what the original writer was asking

Be careful opening attached .doc's in Word, f'r instance ... isn't that
the macro-viruses' route? Takes more than pine, true. Eudora, now, I'd
keep a close eye on that one.

:)

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From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 10:50:52 -0500