COM File - Malicious Usage of The .com Extension

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.

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