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Assessment Title
Rule Text
Open-restricted File Type Properties
Description
Discussion Text
For some file types, providing the user an opportunity to cancel the opening of the file provides adequate protection for most environments. Files that are opened with applications that include internal controls on code execution are good candidates for this technique.
The Open Confirmation property, enabled through the Confirm open after download setting, provides a notice to the user that allows them to open the file, save the file to disk, or cancel the file open task. The Always show extension setting adds additional value. This ensures that users can see the file type before attempting to open it.
The Values of confirm after download and always show extension give the users additional information about a file so a decision can be made as to whether it should be opened.
The command line tool, ’assoc’, can be used to determine if a given file type definition exists. For example, on typical Windows systems the command ’assoc.bat’ returns ’.bat=batfile’ indicating that the extension .bat is defined and that the properties are stored in the Windows Registry under the key batfile.
Windows Explorer can be used to manually display and configure the Actions, Always Show Extension, and Open Confirmation properties. In Windows 2000 and XP use the File Types tab of the Tools | Folder Options dialog in Windows Explorer.
It must be recognized that performing these changes does not eliminate the danger from malicious code. Such code could come from a number of sources and use trigger techniques other than the Windows file type open action. Thus the changes documented here are not a substitute for an anti-virus tool with current definitions.
NOTE: The application of this change affects the behavior of all Windows applications that utilize the affected Registry settings.
The Open Confirmation property, enabled through the Confirm open after download setting, provides a notice to the user that allows them to open the file, save the file to disk, or cancel the file open task. The Always show extension setting adds additional value. This ensures that users can see the file type before attempting to open it.
The Values of confirm after download and always show extension give the users additional information about a file so a decision can be made as to whether it should be opened.
The command line tool, ’assoc’, can be used to determine if a given file type definition exists. For example, on typical Windows systems the command ’assoc.bat’ returns ’.bat=batfile’ indicating that the extension .bat is defined and that the properties are stored in the Windows Registry under the key batfile.
Windows Explorer can be used to manually display and configure the Actions, Always Show Extension, and Open Confirmation properties. In Windows 2000 and XP use the File Types tab of the Tools | Folder Options dialog in Windows Explorer.
It must be recognized that performing these changes does not eliminate the danger from malicious code. Such code could come from a number of sources and use trigger techniques other than the Windows file type open action. Thus the changes documented here are not a substitute for an anti-virus tool with current definitions.
NOTE: The application of this change affects the behavior of all Windows applications that utilize the affected Registry settings.
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