Clean Viruses work / don't work if compressed

Julian Field jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk
Mon Feb 18 10:16:52 GMT 2002


At 23:31 17/02/2002, you wrote:
>I noticed that if a word document is infected with a Macro Virus and is
>attached in an email, it gets cleaned and sent to the recepient.
>However, if it is compressed, it does not. It just puts it in the quarintine
>folder.
>Is there a way to clean a file even if it is compressed?

No, as it is the Anti-Virus software that does the zip unpacking.

>Is this a something the AntiVirus software has to be capable of, OR
>mailscanner?

It's something the antivirus software has to be capable of. And I've yet to
see one which can do it. They can all detect viruses within zip files, but
none of them can clean viruses within zip files.
--
Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
                             Southampton SO17 1BJ



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