Bugs and flaws

[bellovin at acm.org (Steven M. Bellovin)]

In message <43E0650D.7000205 at novell.com>, Crispin Cowan writes:
> Unfortunately, this safety feature is nearly useless, because if you
> take an infected whatever.doc file, and just *rename* it to whatever.rtf
> and send it, then MS Word will cheerfully open the file for you when you
> double click on the attachment, ignore the mismatch between the file
> extension and the actual file type, and run the fscking VB embedded within.

That actually illustrates a different principle: don't have two 
different ways of checking for the same thing.

                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.stevebellovin.com