opening e-mail attachments safely

[thewolfe]

Would opening an e-mail attachment in a virtual machine protect me from the bad guys. If not is there a way besides not opening it up at all?

[fliptw]

if you have to ask this question of yourself, you are better off not opening it.

[snoopy]

You would need to make sure that you break all connections between the virtual machine and your host OS to really be safe. I'd make sure to shut down all drive links, network, and anything else that you possibly can before touching it.

The safer bet would be to open it in a different OS (*nix?) where windows code just won't execute - assuming that any malicious code in the attachment would be for windows. What's the file type? If it's a compressed archive, you can open it a lot more safely in *nix. If it's executable, then you're kinda forced into trying to make a VM jail.

Otherwise: do you have a spare machine sitting around that you don't mind trashing? Try opening it on a spare machine.

Try looking for information akin to creating a chroot jail for windows using a virtual machine.

[thewolfe]

I do have a spare machine that I use for testing and the like that I can and do use. Just a question that popped into my head. Always trying to learn and understand. Always gathering info for myself and others.

Thanks for the post.

[thewolfe]

BTW Fliptw, not a very usefull answer.

[ Post made via iPad ]

[Krom]

You might not find fliptw's answer very useful, but I don't disagree with it. If you don't know what an attachment is or does, then you shouldn't open it period.

[thewolfe]

I totally agree. That was the reason for my question. I don't but wondered if there was a safe way.

[snoopy]

I totally agree. That was the reason for my question. I don't but wondered if there was a safe way.

I really do thing that the safest way is to open it on a spare computer that you don't mind trashing. Theoretically you can probably do it in a virtual machine, but you never know if a hacker anticipated this and found a vulnerability in the VM software that he could take advantage of. Even with a separate machine, something malicious will probably be well hidden, so if you're opening it to check it and then copy it to your main machine, you're still quite vulnerable to anything that doesn't immediately present itself. I'd say that the only genuinely safe way to do it (assuming it's something printable) would be to open, print, and then format the entire machine that you opened it with.

At that point you're kinda looking at overkill.... somehow sometime you have to trust the sender and your virus software....

[TigerRaptor]

Upload it to Virus Total since you're not sure. The website uses 43 different anti virus scanners.

http://www.virustotal.com

Your call.

[Isaac]

You can live boot linux off a usb or cd, which can include a friendly GUI so you don't have to ever touch the terminal. Click Safely Remove for any harddrives Linux found, so they won't be targeted by any malware you might want to play with, then have a blast downloading and running whatever you want. be hungry like thewolfe, once again; have fun.

[Grendel]

Don't use Outlook ? I don't have any problems w/ malicious emails in Thunderbird. OTOH I also never open attachments from unreliable sources. I it's uncalled for, it's stupid to blindly open it IMHO.