In 3 instances, there was a XLSX file within the winmail.dat. The other 3 
instances, AFAIK, there was only a PDF file within the winmail.dat.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Andy Schmidt" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2015 11:13am
To: [email protected]
Subject: [MBF] Re: winmail.dat but Outlook opened it as an Excel spreadsheet 
XLSX correctly

Well, the question is whether ClamAV reported "clean" because it only looked 
at the byte pattern of some arbitrary file (in this case called 
winmail.dat), while ESET AV might have "knowledge" of winmail.dat files 
being "containers", but it might not have any "decoder" for winmail.dat 
files. In this case it might know that there is some sort of attached file 
inside the winmail.dat, which potentially could be an executable, or a file 
that might contain macros, etc. - so it would (correctly) report it as 
"can't be scanned" to alert you that there an embedded file is "sneaking by".

I don't know this to be a FACT, I'm just throwing out a scenario that would 
account for the difference in behavior. You'd have to check with each vendor of 
course for an explanation.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] 
On Behalf Of John Tolmachoff
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2015 1:46 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [MBF] Re: winmail.dat but Outlook opened it as an Excel spreadsheet 
XLSX correctly

Thanks for the explanation Andy. But that still leaves the question as to 
why ESET AV reported "could not be scanned" while ClamAV reported a 0 
meaning clean.

-----Original Message-----
From: "Andy Schmidt" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2015 11:51am
To: [email protected]
Subject: [MBF] Re: winmail.dat but Outlook opened it as an Excel spreadsheet 
XLSX correctly

Winmail.dat is attached by Outlook when you choose Microsoft's legacy "RICH 
TEXT" as the message format, instead of "HTML" (or "Plain Text".)   It 
predates SMTP, when there was a pre-Windows 2000 "Microsoft Mail" system for 
LANs...

If I remember correctly, there is even a setting buried inside the Outlook 
"Contacts", where you can specify a "preferred" Email format for individual 
contacts. It's possible that (unknown to the user), some of his contacts 
have "rich text"... causing the same email to be formatted in different 
ways, yielding different results, for different recipients (but I'm vague on 
that one).

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] 
On Behalf Of John Tolmachoff
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2015 2:43 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [MBF] winmail.dat but Outlook opened it as an Excel spreadsheet 
XLSX correctly

OK, here is one I do not understand. This has happened at least 6 times that 
I know of in the last 2 days. An email was received and processed by 
Declude. It contained an attachment winmail.dat. BUT the sender had attached 
an XLSX file. After talking to the intended recipient (who also talked to 
the sender) the sender has stated that when he attached the XLSX file to the 
email, the file appeared as an EXCEL ICON in the body of the email not where 
you would normally see it under the subject line. This is in Outlook. The 
version he is using is Outlook 2013. (15.0) What caught the attachment was 
ESET AV had a result code of 10 which is "some files could not be scanned 
(may be threats)" which I then treat as infected.




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