Posted: Apr 24, 2012 12:31 AM  (Msg. 2 of 8)

can you post a link? couldn't find it on TPB.

Not caffeinated.

Posted: Apr 24, 2012 11:33 AM  (Msg. 4 of 8)

Quote:
They can contain executables that are viruses, but I've never seen the action of opening a ZIP file automatically launch an executable contained within it.  If the ZIP decompression software you're using does this I would recommend finding different software or looking for an option to disable that "feature"... such practice would be risky.  (Besides being the family IT guy it has also been my career for the last 17 years.)

To date I've downloaded the manuals a few times, sometimes packed in a ZIP archive.  (They are a nice addition to my purchased printed manuals, natch.)  I've looked over the ones I have available on this computer and they included a variety of PDF, JPG, BMP, TIFF, GIF and TXT files, all which should be harmless.  (note, I do believe at one time there was an issue with PDFs being able to carry a scripting payload of some sort but I believe Adobe patched it in their reader long ago.)  Some of the ZIPs did have some HTM webpage files to make browsing/viewing the images easier.  These could potentially have Javascript or other embedded scripting payloads.  I'm familiar enough with HTML to be able to open the files in a text editor and confirm nothing of that sort exists though.  Still recommended to use a browser where you can easily control scripting (my choice is Firefox with the NoScript plugin) to act as an additional guard.  I haven't looked over bigbadjim's upload yet, but I would hope that being someone who has actively taken part in some detailed threads and isn't just a random first-time-poster that he would not lead us into malicious downloads.

Bigbadjim, in whatever you've collected together does it include the large size EU (was in French I believe) wiring diagram that was posted in one of threads recently?  This was something new in the information that has been shared around here and would be great if it was in your collection.  Also, if the torrent is just a single ZIP file as Yo indicated, there are other benefits in publishing the data outside of one large ZIP besides just the contents being a little unmasked.  When I last used the open source torrent downloader Azureus (think it's got a new name since then) I could see "folder share" torrents where once I started downloading I could pick only files I wanted to download and ignore the rest of the data.  Might be useful if say someone only wanted the Clymer PDF but didn't need exploded diagram BMPs, etc.  Yeah you'd then be looking a connections that wouldn't be full seeders but it is still nice to have options.

-Craig

Worf says, "Ride in Glory with Honor"

Posted: Apr 25, 2012 10:00 PM  (Msg. 6 of 8)

Quote:

It's probably not as bad a worry as it once was. MS Outlook has (or used to have) an option  setting that would open zip files when you click them. WinZip (I don't know if this still holds true or not any longer) had a version of compression utility that would allow a user to compress files with an automatic, "run on unzip" feature that would do just that. An exe file would be placed in the archive and set to run as soon as the zip was opened.

You can see that this combination of option setting and the way the file was compressed could be quite hazardous. This was something I have dealt with personally so I know it's a possibility.

Yo-

Worf says, "Ride in Glory with Honor"

Posted: Apr 28, 2012 02:44 PM  (Msg. 8 of 8)

Craig, I agree, but I guess I'm still leery about it. I don't use Outlook any longer either.

Yo-