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I am not sure I understand this issue. Only a crazy person would think they have the power to block all code entering their network. Stenography is a one sided

by tyho 11y ago

I am not sure I understand this issue. Only a crazy person would think they have the power to block all code entering their network. Stenography is a one sided battle.

beagle3 11y ago
This is not code as in "secret code for which you need a decoder ring". It is executable code that gets executed with one click inside your network, and with essentially full permissions. Code that can go through is a bug. Usually a buffer overflow, but in this case, it's a specification bug back from the days when the world wasn't so networked. Also, I think you meant steganography.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > It is executable code that gets executed with one click inside your network, and with essentially full permissions. At least 2 clicks, one of which is a warning. Although I accept the warnings are mostly pointless.
- xorcist 11y ago
  > back from the days when the world wasn't so networked. That's not it. Just read any magazine from that year. Everybody thought it was a terrible idea, just as autorun.exe was completely insane. Viruses was a huge problem at the time, and they spread via infected floppies or CDs and documents. So automatically running embedded code if possible even worse back then. But they went with it anyway. It's good as long as it moves the goal posts for the competition. The business case is not always the use case.
StavrosK 11y ago
> Stenography is a one sided battle. I'm sure there's a great joke around that punchline, but I can't find it.
nailer 11y ago
> Only a crazy person would think they have the power to block all code entering their network. Every other mail system other than Outlook and Notes (and I say this having started my career as an NT4-era Windows person) has been incredibly successful at blocking executable code in email messages in comparison. Safe defaults are hard, but they're also a minimum expectation of software these days. To further back this up, I'm sure newer Outlook apps (eg, the iOS one) definitely do not have this issue.
chris_wot 11y ago
What? Corporations have been successfully (well, except for this issue) blocking executable content in email from a long time now.

by tyho 11y ago

I am not sure I understand this issue. Only a crazy person would think they have the power to block all code entering their network. Stenography is a one sided battle.

beagle3 11y ago

This is not code as in "secret code for which you need a decoder ring". It is executable code that gets executed with one click inside your network, and with essentially full permissions. Code that can go through is a bug. Usually a buffer overflow, but in this case, it's a specification bug back from the days when the world wasn't so networked. Also, I think you meant steganography.

DanBC 11y ago
> It is executable code that gets executed with one click inside your network, and with essentially full permissions. At least 2 clicks, one of which is a warning. Although I accept the warnings are mostly pointless.
xorcist 11y ago
> back from the days when the world wasn't so networked. That's not it. Just read any magazine from that year. Everybody thought it was a terrible idea, just as autorun.exe was completely insane. Viruses was a huge problem at the time, and they spread via infected floppies or CDs and documents. So automatically running embedded code if possible even worse back then. But they went with it anyway. It's good as long as it moves the goal posts for the competition. The business case is not always the use case.

StavrosK 11y ago

> Stenography is a one sided battle. I'm sure there's a great joke around that punchline, but I can't find it.

nailer 11y ago

> Only a crazy person would think they have the power to block all code entering their network. Every other mail system other than Outlook and Notes (and I say this having started my career as an NT4-era Windows person) has been incredibly successful at blocking executable code in email messages in comparison. Safe defaults are hard, but they're also a minimum expectation of software these days. To further back this up, I'm sure newer Outlook apps (eg, the iOS one) definitely do not have this issue.

chris_wot 11y ago

What? Corporations have been successfully (well, except for this issue) blocking executable content in email from a long time now.