Email attachment

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An email attachment is a computer file sent along with an email message. One or
more files can be attached to any email message, and be sent along with it to the
recipient. This is typically used as a simple method to share documents and
images.

Contents

 1History, and technical detail

 2Size limits
 3Malware
o 3.1Dangerous file types
 4References

History, and technical detail[edit]

Originally Internet SMTP email was 7-bit ASCII text only. Text files were emailed
by including them in the message body. In the mid 1980s text files could be
grouped with UNIX tools such as bundle[1][2] and shar (shell archive)[3] and included
in email message bodies, allowing them to be unpacked on remote UNIX systems
with a single shell command.
Attaching non-text files was first done in 1980 by manually encoding 8-bit files
using Mary Ann Horton's uuencode, and later using BinHex or xxencode[4] and
pasting the resulting text into the body of the message. When the "Attachment"
user interface first appeared on PCs in cc:Mail around 1985,[5] it used
the uuencode format for SMTP transmission, as did Microsoft Mail later.
Modern email systems use the MIME standard, making email attachments more
utilitarian and seamless. This was developed by Nathaniel Borenstein and
collaborator Ned Freed[6][7] - with the standard being officially released
as RFC2045 in 1996.
With MIME, a message and all its attachments are encapsulated in a
single multipart message, with base64 encoding used to convert binary into 7-bit
ASCII text - or on some modern mail servers, optionally full 8-bit support via
the 8BITMIME extension.

Size limits[edit]
Email standards such as MIME do not specify any file size limits, but in practice
email users will find that they cannot successfully send very large files across the
Internet.
This is because of a number of potential limits:
  Mail systems often arbitrarily limit the size their users
are allowed to submit.[8]
 A message will often pass through several mail
transfer agents to reach the recipient. Each of these
has to store the message before forwarding it on, and
may therefore also impose size limits.
 The recipient mail system may reject incoming emails
with attachments over a certain size.
The result is that while large attachments may succeed internally within a company
or organization, they may not when sending across the Internet.
As an example, when Google's Gmail service increased its arbitrary limit to 25MB it
warned that: "you may not be able to send larger attachments to contacts who use
other email services with smaller attachment limits".[9][10]
Also note that all these size limits are based, not on the original file size, but
the MIME-encoded copy. The common Base64 encoding adds about 37% to the
original file size, meaning that an original 20MB file could exceed a 25MB file
attachment limit.[11] A 10MB email size limit would require that the size of the
attachment files is actually limited to about 7MB.

Malware[edit]
See also: Spamming
A lot of malware is distributed via email attachments with some even considering
such to be the main vector for cyberattacks on businesses.[12][13][14] Users are advised
to be extremely cautious with attachments and to not open any attachments that
are not from a trusted source and expected − even if the sender is in their address
book as their account might have been taken over or misused. [12][15][16] While many
email servers scan attachments for malware and block dangerous filetypes, this
should not be relied upon − especially as such cannot detect zero-day exploits.[17]
Dangerous file types[edit]
Email users are typically warned that unexpected email with attachments should
always be considered suspicious and dangerous, particularly if not known to be
sent by a trusted source. However, in practice this advice is not enough – "known
trusted sources" were the senders of executable programs creating mischief and
mayhem as early as 1987 with the mainframe-based Christmas Tree EXEC.
Since the ILOVEYOU and Anna Kournikova worms of 2000 and 2001, email
systems have increasingly added layers of protection to prevent potential malware.
Now, many block certain types of attachments. [18][19]

References[edit]
1. ^ The UNIX Programming Environment, Kernighan and Pike,
1984, p.97
 2. ^ "Unix tricks and traps".  AUUGN.  15  (4): 87. August 1994.
3. ^ Modern versions of shar can deal with binaries, via
uuencoding them, but this was not initially the case.
4. ^ "How do I use UUencode/BinHex/MIME support?",
winzip.com.
5. ^ InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. (June 3, 1985). InfoWorld.
InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. p. 41.
6. ^ Father of the email attachment, Patrick Kingsley, The
Guardian, 26 March 2012
7. ^ "The MIME guys: How two Internet gurus changed e-mail
forever " Archived 2012-01-25 at the Wayback Machine,
February 01, 2011, Jon Brodkin, Network World
8. ^ "Setting Message Size Limits in Exchange 2010 and
Exchange 2007";
9. ^ "Google updates file size limits for Gmail and YouTube",
geek.com Archived 2011-12-19 at the Wayback Machine.
10. ^ "Maximum attachment size", mail.google,com.
11. ^ "Raw vs. Encoded Email Message Size — What's the
Difference?".
12. ^ Jump up to:    Martin, Jim. "Here's what you need to do to protect
a b

your PC from ransomware and NotPetya". Tech Advisor.

Retrieved  29 June 2017.
13. ^ "Truth on zero-day attacks". PCR. Retrieved 29 June  2017.
14. ^ Aycock, John (2006).  Computer Viruses and Malware.
Springer.  ISBN  9780387341880. Retrieved  29 June 2017.
15. ^ Miller, Michael R. (2009). Microsoft Security Essentials User
Manual (Digital Short Cut). Pearson
Education. ISBN 9780768695298. Retrieved 29 June  2017.
16. ^ Vermaat, Misty E. (2014).  Enhanced Discovering Computers,
Essentials. Cengage Learning. ISBN 9781285845531.
Retrieved  29 June 2017.
17. ^ "How To Spot A Dangerous Email Attachment". MakeUseOf.
Retrieved  29 June 2017.
18. ^ "Some file types are blocked", mail.google.com.
19. ^ "You may receive an "Outlook blocked access to the following
potentially unsafe attachments" message in Outlook",
microsoft.com.

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