IT Services has recently fielded some questions concerning email attachments blocked by our anti-spam system. When a message is blocked because of a prohibited attachment, the sender receives a notification of the block. While this may pose an inconvenience to both sender and recipient, the blocking of specific attachments is a common security practice among organizations to protect their employees and sensitive data from a rising tide of email-based malware and phishing attempts.
Currently blocked attachments
Attachments, including .exe, .vbs, and .zip files, often contain malicious code that can be used to compromise the recipient’s computer, and can lead to theft or loss of sensitive information, as well as financial loss.
To protect UFV email recipients, IT Services actively blocks the following file types:
.bat, .cmd, .com, .dll, .enc, .exe, .pif, .rar, .scr, .vbs, .zip, and .zipx
Workaround
Attachments in unsolicited messages should never be opened. However, where someone needs to send a legitimate file via email that would normally be blocked, they can simply modify the extension name of the file they want to send. Example: If a legitimate .zip file is being sent, changing the extension to .piz will allow the attachment to be sent without being blocked.
For more information, contact Christopher Jones at Christopher.Jones@ufv.ca
04/24/2015