How do I get Outlook Express not to treat perl scripts as potential viruses

rinceWind has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I send and receive many .pl files as attachments. Having recently applied MS mandatory security patches to my home PC, I have found that I was no longer able to read .pl attachments - either they were greyed out, or getting the message:

OE removed access to the following attachments in your mail
[download]

I found a checkbox in the tools => options => security, for allowing all scripted attachments, and this allowed me to read the mail. However, unchecking this box allows .EXEs, VBscripts and other potential nasties.

<RANT>Surely sweet, innocent Perl does not belong in this category. I imagine someone could conceivably write a virus in Perl (this is not a golfing exercise or a challenge ;| we don't want Perl to earn that reputation), but this would probably require certain modules to be pre-installed, hence would fail on the majority of installations. Anyway, this asside, you still have to click the attachment to run it, and again, choose to run it instead of save it as it is - the OE setting turns of the save option as well.</RANT>

I was wondering if there was a list, in the registry or elsewhere, where Outlook Express keeps a list of the file types it thinks are suspect.

rinceWind

Comment on How do I get Outlook Express not to treat perl scripts as potential viruses Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How do I get Outlook Express not to treat perl scripts as potential viruses by data64 (Chaplain) on Jan 19, 2003 at 19:05 UTC
The only workaround I can think of is to zip them up and send and receive zip files instead of .pl/.pm files. I do not use Outlook or Outlook Express so I couldn't help you with the registry keys. Update: There seems to be some information here. Just a tongue-tied, twisted, earth-bound misfit. -- Pink Floyd	[reply]
Re: Re: How do I get Outlook Express not to treat perl scripts as potential viruses by Mr. Muskrat (Canon) on Jan 20, 2003 at 15:30 UTC
One of the latest batches of updates doesn't allow Outlook or Outlook Express to save zip files either (but still allows MS Office files through, go figure).	[reply]
Re: How do I get Outlook Express not to treat perl scripts as potential viruses by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 19, 2003 at 19:15 UTC
Unfortunately, your assessment is not true - there have been and will again be (and probably are right now) ways to trick OE into executing attachments even without the user opening them. I also know for a fact that there is indeed a list somewhere and a way to modify these permissions, but unfortunately I only vaguely remember reading about it. As I'm on Linux, I don't even have a way to look for that. In the long term, the best advice anyone can give you, although I realize this does nothing to solve the problem at hand, is to move away from the trojans called IE and OE and use other software such as Mozilla to browse, maybe its builtin client for mails, or maybe PegasusMail, or the excellent TheBat! (but it's cashware). The latter tend to be much, much lighter on your system as well. Maybe there are constraints which bind you to MS software, but if at all possible I'd give the options a long hard look and try to make them work. Ok, now maybe someone else can come along and actually help you. `:^)` Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply]
Re: How do I get Outlook Express not to treat perl scripts as potential viruses by Marza (Vicar) on Jan 19, 2003 at 18:47 UTC
We don't do the microsoft clients but what you have is their "solution" to all the virus' that outlook distributes. I don't distribute scripts via mail because that teaches my users bad habits. It took me a couple months to get them to not click on stuff that came through their mail! sigh There has been a Perl script virus. Some knuckle head tried to post one to the code section. So it is not entirely correct to say Perl does not belong there. With all the people that hate Microsoft, if they saw Perl was execluded they would use it. If you have a decent virus scanner installed, you might check it for mail scanning. If it has it, then enable it and turn off the outlook attachment option.	[reply]
Re: How do I get Outlook Express not to treat perl scripts as potential viruses by castaway (Parson) on Jan 20, 2003 at 07:52 UTC
There is a registry key for this, use with care, as always. I found it by googling for +'outlook express' +attachments +extensions. There are also a few tools which you can use to show/change this list. this site should be helpful (it lists the tools and the registry-change). Good luck! C.	[reply]
Re: How do I get Outlook Express not to treat perl scripts as potential viruses by Wysardry (Pilgrim) on Jan 19, 2003 at 23:48 UTC
Have you tried renaming the files in the form of whatever.pl.txt and then renaming them back again once they're saved?	[reply]
Re^2: How do I get Outlook Express not to treat perl scripts as potential viruses by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 22, 2003 at 12:40 UTC
How would that work when it doesn't even let him save them? Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply]
Re: Re^2: How do I get Outlook Express not to treat perl scripts as potential viruses by Wysardry (Pilgrim) on Jan 23, 2003 at 00:49 UTC
I meant renaming them before they were sent via email (and telling others to do the same). It sounded as if this was an ongoing problem in exchanging Perl programs on a regular basis with people he/she knows.	[reply]

Update: