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This might be a big news: Gmail is scanning your emails for "illegal attachments"

adlep

adlep

Diamond Member
According to Google, whatever I am trying to send to my gmail account is "illegal" (?). There were two executable files I was trying to send to my gmail account and my message would always get bounced back with the following error message:
"SMTP error from remote mailer after end of data:
host gsmtp171.google.com [64.233.171.27]: 552 5.7.0 Illegal Attachment".

I have done some additional experiments such us trying to rename the files, adding them to a .zip , and to .rar file. In all of the cases, the gateway was able to detect my attachments and throw them out. I suspect that google is implementing some very clever signature scanning algorithms to detect and filter out certain types of executables.
Carefull folks, the "big-brother" is watching...
 
no i doubt that... "illegal" is just their way of saying it's unacceptable in that form. It's likely the virus scanner that's spitting it back at you.

Did you also try sending it to other people instead of your own gmail - could be another reason why. Try sending to your hotmail or yahoo email account.
 
Originally posted by: rh71
no i doubt that... "illegal" is just their way of saying it's unacceptable in that form. It's likely the virus scanner that's spitting it back at you.
Click to expand...

bingo
 
Originally posted by: emmpee
Originally posted by: rh71
no i doubt that... "illegal" is just their way of saying it's unacceptable in that form. It's likely the virus scanner that's spitting it back at you.
Click to expand...

bingo
Click to expand...

Yeah, but what about the "harmless" form, such us .zip?
I have tried it as well and it didn't work.
The file I am trying to send is not a virus...
 
Originally posted by: adlep
Originally posted by: emmpee
Originally posted by: rh71
no i doubt that... "illegal" is just their way of saying it's unacceptable in that form. It's likely the virus scanner that's spitting it back at you.
Click to expand...

bingo
Click to expand...

Yeah, but what about the "harmless" form, such us .zip?
I have tried it as well and it didn't work.
The file I am trying to send is not a virus...
Click to expand...

They probably ban all .exe files, and are scanning inside .zip files looking for .exe files.
 
"illegal" in this sense means "not within a predefined set of rules"

But the rules to which GMail is referring are not those made by politicians but those made by programmers.

The mail server's "rules" will not let you send certain types of attachments that could contain malicious code, so it is "illegal" to send them.

This isn't a conspiracy, it's just good practice. End of story.
 
Originally posted by: her209
You idiot... just zip up your zip with a password. Take a page out of the virus coders man!
Click to expand...

Exactly. For any private files I put on GMail, I password protect them and RAR them up with an inconspicuous name like November pictures.
 
this is what I did to get around the scanner:
1. I have changed the extensions of the files to .jpg
2. Added them to .zip file and password protected them (it still would bounce :Q)
3. Added them to a .rar file and passowrd protected the archive.

😀
I am smarter than google
😛
 
Originally posted by: adlep
this is what I did to get around the scanner:
1. I have changed the extensions of the files to .jpg
2. Added them to .zip file and password protected them (it still would bounce :Q)
3. Added them to a .rar file and passowrd protected the archive.

😀
I am smarter than google
😛
Click to expand...

What would be funny is if you used google to find out how to do it.
 
just change to *.exe to *_EXE basically don't have the following extensions in your attachments since a lot of servers will refuse them (eg. bat, exe, com, zip, rar, z etc).
 
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