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Yukonjack
February 19th, 2005, 07:26 PM
A friend of mine is visiting for a few days and check his yahoo mail and had this file sent to him by his girl.
OLE2 compound document storage
All he does is E-mail and me I don't know much about windows I assume it is a windows file. I tested it with F-Prot for virus and came out clean.
Is there a way for me to open this file so my friend can see it.
kassetra
February 19th, 2005, 07:45 PM
An OLE2 file is *supposed* to be a microsoft office stream data file...

However, this file format is a favorite of virus writers, because it is very hard to actually find the virus inside the file.

OLE2 files are essentially a little dos filesystem inside a file, and it can store many different "streams" within the file, so it could have text, pictures, and a virus all in different streams.

I would have your friend ask his girl what she sent him before opening it. Also, since it is a proprietary format that has not been reverse engineered (yet), most likely you will be unable to open the file in Linux.

There are tools in windows to open the file, but essentially all of them will end up running the virus stream, if there is one.
Yukonjack
February 19th, 2005, 07:55 PM
I had him check the e-mail again and she said they were pictures.
I will tell him to e-mail her and ask to zip them up instead.

Thanks kassetra, I learned something about windows today hehehe :wink:
kassetra
February 19th, 2005, 08:15 PM
I used to teach at a private technical school, and we had an entire semester devoted to object linking and embedding (OLE) ... if ever there was a convoluted way of saying "dude, this file contains streams".... "object linking and embedding" has to take the cake.

:) So yeah, have her send them in a zip. Much easier on him. :)
BWF89
February 19th, 2005, 11:05 PM
Also, since it is a proprietary format that has not been reverse engineered (yet), most likely you will be unable to open the file in Linux.
Could anyone imagine what would happen to the world of open source if a law was made to outlaw reverse engineering? No one would use OpenOffice or any other OSS program that can open up proprietary file formats.

/shakes
Yukonjack
February 20th, 2005, 03:06 AM
Could anyone imagine what would happen to the world of open source if a law was made to outlaw reverse engineering? No one would use OpenOffice or any other OSS program that can open up proprietary file formats.
/shakes

That would be a big nightmare I do not want to have. :wink: