Malicious Usage of The .com Extension
Some computer virus writers have hoped to take advantage of modern computer users' likely lack of knowledge of the .com file extension and associated binary format, along with their more likely familiarity with the .com Internet domain name. E-mail has been sent with attachment names similar to "www.example.com". Unwary Microsoft Windows users clicking on such an attachment would expect to begin browsing a site named http://www.example.com/, but instead would run the attached binary command file named www.example, giving it full permission to do to their machine whatever its author had in mind.
Note that there is nothing malicious about the COM file format itself; this is an exploitation of the coincidental name collision between .com command files and .com commercial web sites.
Read more about this topic: COM File
Famous quotes containing the words malicious, usage and/or extension:
“With care, and skill, and cunning art,
She parried Time’s malicious dart,
And kept the years at bay,
Till passion entered in her heart
And aged her in a day!”
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919)
“I am using it [the word ‘perceive’] here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)
“We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)