Worm Protection

Protect yourself against email worms

Online Armor contains several features to help protect you against worms.

Many worms arrive by email. Their objective - to trick you into running the attachment. Commonly, there are two tricks which are used by these programs which are easily detectable. Online Armor detects these tricks when it checks inbound email, and again when the program tries to run.

Double Extensions

The Double extension trick is where a program is given a deliberately deceptive name. For example, "NicePhoto.jpg.exe". In this case, a casual observer might not notice the ".exe" which indicates the file is a program, especially if the attachment has an icon which matches the first extension (jpg). However, should the user click on the file - it will run. It's a program.

Online Armor's mailshield will display an alert if you receive such a program through the mail, and provide advice. Simiarly if you double click on such a file (to try and open it) Online Armor will warn you that you're trying to run a likely dangerous program - after all, safe programs are not usually trying to trick you.

Extra Spaces

The extra spaces trick is a variation on the double extension trick. The filename is padded with extra spaces to try and hide the real extension of the file (for example: MyHotPhoto.jpg                   .exe)

Again, Online Armor's mailshield will display an alert if you receive such a program through the mail, and provide advice. Simiarly if you double click on such a file (to try and open it) Online Armor will warn you that you're trying to run a likely dangerous program - after all, safe programs are not usually trying to trick you.

Scripts

Online Armor will warn you when a script (such as a vb script) tries to run. This is important because a VB script can perform potentially dangerous operations on your computer if it runs with the right privileges. Since most users run with full administrative rights all the time, this is a concern - especially when it's very easy to accidentally click on a script in an email.

Lowered Rights

Online Armor will automatically run your web browser and email clients with reduced security rights (the minimum they need to do the job). This also helps to protect you against worms and trojans since they typically enter through the email client or web browser. By restricting the rights of these programs, even if you do allow them to run in error the potential damage that they can do is limited.