Re: [Evolution] Evolution/GPG

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

> Thank you! I tried to open them, by the way, in gedit, but they were
> empty. I'm just worried because I downloaded them. I really hope they're
> not doing my computer any harm. The sender doesn't understand it either.
> I'll look into it.

The bottom line is that malware on Linux is quite rare - most
problematic things are root kits: viruses and the like (as you
understand it from the Windows world) are virtually non existent.
(There's no way I'm going to give anyone a 100% surety on that because
someone is bound to come up with an example.)

You will not - and I'll stick my neck out on that - will not cause any
problems by looking at a file.  You will need to run the file either as
a shell script or an executable in order for it to even come close to
causing a problem.  If you are running as a normal user and not root,
then the malware will not be able to alter system files. And you must
never, ever, ever, run things like mail clients, browsers, or anything
that touches internet things as root.

One thing you also must remember about Linux (or any Unix) is that the
file extension is meaningless.  It is a construct left over from DOS
days.  In Linux an executable file doesn't have to be called x.exe, a
document doesn't have to be called x.doc and a data file doesn't have
to be called x.dat.  They can be called by those names, but that is
purely for the user; the system, by and large, doesn't take any notice
of it.  If you want to find out what a file contains use the 'file'
command - so something like

   file attachment.dat

So, for example, I have two identical files - 'basic.ics' and 'basic'.
file gives:

    $ file basic.ics
    basic.ics: vCalendar calendar file
    $ file basic
    basic: vCalendar calendar file

If you run file on a something you don't know and it comes up as :

    $ file t
    t: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically
    linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU/Linux
    2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=e2043d6d8b73642f4d427021aacda4480dcb6311, not
    stripped

Then I would be suspicious of it - don't run it to find out what it
does!

But this is getting far away from Evolution now.

P.