The Beyond Security team reports that a largely unused feature in the Outlook Express mail client has, literally, opened up a new way for virus writers to bypass standard anti-virus software packages.
The feature, known as "message fragmentation and re-assembly", is meant to allow users who want to send large e-mails to split the mail into smaller chunks. When they send the mail, the receiving client re-assembles the mail to make up the whole.
Beyond Security notes that by splitting up virus messages, writers may well be able to bypass the normal checking routines because the virus signature will be split into multiple parts, making it difficult to recognise.
Outlook Express is the only client that supports re-assembly by default, although Outlook is capable of doing so.
Beyond Security suggests that anti-virus companies include the tools to re-assemble messages at the gateway before checking them. Or, as Symantec does, use the brute force way of simply denying all multi-part messages. [More at Beyond Security]
New dual Intel Xeons
More from the Intel Developer forum: yesterday the company announced the latest in its range of Xeon server processors, the 2.8GHz and 2.6GHz processors for two-way workstations and server platforms.
The new Xeons are hitting the market a little earlier than originally planned and the company says it is designing and manufacturing its enterprise products much faster than initially anticipated. The new Xeons feature 512KB level two cache on a 0.13 micron platform with RDRAM memory and support for high-end graphics systems.
Further down the line, the company expects to ship three new processors before year`s end. Codenamed Granite Bay, Placer and Plumas 533, the first two are aimed at uni- and dual-processor systems with the Plumas focused on the server side. All three will feature a 533MHz system bus and DDR 266 memory.
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