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Social engineering and user-intervention
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<blockquote data-quote="Wave" data-source="post: 568037"><p>Generally no, unless an exploit has been executed (and usually in this case the system can already result in becoming further compromised without any further user-interaction - so in this situation the attacker shouldn't need the victim to even bother handling the attachments to become infected). For example, the attacker may find a way to embed code (e.g. JavaScript) into their e-mail which will become executed once the e-mail has been read and exploit the system... Causing remote code execution, or something similar.</p><p></p><p>However without usage of things like exploits, no, just downloading the attachment should not result in infection. However, this is still a very risky thing to do, since you could accidentally mess up by running it or another program may accidentally access the downloaded attachment and cause it to execute (I know it sounds a bit ridiculous but this is all possible). If you are dealing with unknown attachments from an unknown sender, I recommend you handle them from within a Virtual Machine (also remember that data theft and the such can still occur from within a Virtual Machine, so should the VM become compromised, there are still benefits to the attacker unless things are done properly).</p><p></p><p>It is also good practise to make sure you scan all e-mail attachments at services like <a href="https://virustotal.com/" target="_blank">VirusTotal </a>(and maybe even an online automated malware analysis service like <a href="https://www.reverse.it/" target="_blank">Reverse.it</a> or <a href="https://malwr.com/" target="_blank">Malwr</a>).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wave, post: 568037"] Generally no, unless an exploit has been executed (and usually in this case the system can already result in becoming further compromised without any further user-interaction - so in this situation the attacker shouldn't need the victim to even bother handling the attachments to become infected). For example, the attacker may find a way to embed code (e.g. JavaScript) into their e-mail which will become executed once the e-mail has been read and exploit the system... Causing remote code execution, or something similar. However without usage of things like exploits, no, just downloading the attachment should not result in infection. However, this is still a very risky thing to do, since you could accidentally mess up by running it or another program may accidentally access the downloaded attachment and cause it to execute (I know it sounds a bit ridiculous but this is all possible). If you are dealing with unknown attachments from an unknown sender, I recommend you handle them from within a Virtual Machine (also remember that data theft and the such can still occur from within a Virtual Machine, so should the VM become compromised, there are still benefits to the attacker unless things are done properly). It is also good practise to make sure you scan all e-mail attachments at services like [URL='https://virustotal.com/']VirusTotal [/URL](and maybe even an online automated malware analysis service like [URL='https://www.reverse.it/']Reverse.it[/URL] or [URL='https://malwr.com/']Malwr[/URL]). [/QUOTE]
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