Gmail, Pictures And Exe

[TCH-Thomas]

I have a few times tried to send some zipped pics through my gmail and every time gmail complains that there is an exe file in this zip file, which gmail don´t allow.

I tried to figure out which of these pics that are supposed to be this exe file, but no luck.

If a pic was named "Thomas.exe.jpg" then I could understand it but all are named like "Thomas.jpg" and so on.

All pics are very viewable, which I understand they would not be if they were exe´s, instead if I clicked on them they would try to launch a installation I assume?

Is there some way I can figure this out.

 

All other zip files with pics goes through with no problem, its just one that don´t.

[TCH-BillH]

Hi Thomas,

 

Just my guess on this one ...

 

I bet the gmail programs scan the binary for a sequence of executable code. I bet that one of your pictures just happens to also have a sequence that could be interpreted as executable code. So, if you put the picture in the correct part in memory, something may actually run (maybe only a few instructions).

 

Again, just my guess!

[Make]

I have a few times tried to send some zipped pics through my gmail and every time gmail complains that there is an exe file in this zip file, which gmail don´t allow.

I tried to figure out which of these pics that are supposed to be this exe file, but no luck.

If a pic was named "Thomas.exe.jpg" then I could understand it but all are named like "Thomas.jpg" and so on.

All pics are very viewable, which I understand they would not be if they were exe´s, instead if I clicked on them they would try to launch a installation I assume?

Is there some way I can figure this out.

 

All other zip files with pics goes through with no problem, its just one that don´t.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why do not try to rename picture to whatever.Example Tomas.txt, Tomas.ini or Tomas.rar.

Then just let know recipient to rename it to Tomas.jpg.

[TCH-Thomas]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

 

Why do not try to rename picture to whatever.Example Tomas.txt, Tomas.ini or Tomas.rar.

Then just let know recipient to rename it to Tomas.jpg.

I thought about it, but unfortunately its about 100 pics, so I would hate to do it as well as the receiver would hate to rename them back, if there is an easier solution to find just this one pic.

[Make]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

 

Why do not try to rename picture to whatever.Example Tomas.txt, Tomas.ini or Tomas.rar.

Then just let know recipient to rename it to Tomas.jpg.

I thought about it, but unfortunately its about 100 pics, so I would hate to do it as well as the receiver would hate to rename them back, if there is an easier solution to find just this one pic.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Here you'll find tool that you need for renaiming:

http://lists.gpick.com/pages/File_Rename_Tools.htm

 

Good luck!

[borfast]

Thomas, if you don't mind using the command line, you already have everything you need to rename as many pictures as you want with one simple command:

 

ren *.jpg *.txt

 

[TweezerMan]

This is probably a long shot, but you may want to scan the jpg's in that zip file with a virus scanner. There's an exploit (on Windows PCs, from what I remember) where malicious code inside of specially crafted jpg's could be executed. Assuming one or more of the pics had been infected, gmail could be picking up on that virus code.

[TCH-Thomas]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

 

Why do not try to rename picture to whatever.Example Tomas.txt, Tomas.ini or Tomas.rar.

Then just let know recipient to rename it to Tomas.jpg.

I thought about it, but unfortunately its about 100 pics, so I would hate to do it as well as the receiver would hate to rename them back, if there is an easier solution to find just this one pic.

 

Here you'll find tool that you need for renaiming:

http://lists.gpick.com/pages/File_Rename_Tools.htm

 

Good luck!

Thanks, I´ll check it out shortly.

 

Thomas, if you don't mind using the command line, you already have everything you need to rename as many pictures as you want with one simple command:

 

ren *.jpg *.txt

 

Thanks Raul.

No, I don´t mind using the commandline, but can this be done with just one directory of pics?

 

This is probably a long shot, but you may want to scan the jpg's in that zip file with a virus scanner.  There's an exploit (on Windows PCs, from what I remember) where malicious code inside of specially crafted jpg's could be executed.  Assuming one or more of the pics had been infected, gmail could be picking up on that virus code.

Thanks David.

I thought about this too but the problem with this is that these pics are something I had for a long long time and they have been through atleast 3 different virusscanners + ad-aware + spybot many times and they find nothing.

[TweezerMan]

Assuming that there's really one file with a problem, you could do what's known as a 'binary search' to figure out which file it is.

 

Take your zip file with 100 jpgs in it, split it into 2 zip files with 50 jpgs each, and try to mail those to yourself. One should be successfully sent, one should fail.

 

Take the 50 jpg zip file that failed, split it into 2 zip files with 25 jpgs each, and try to mail those to yourself. Again, one should be successfully sent, and one should fail.

 

Take the 25 jpg zip file that failed, split it into 2 zip files, one with 13 jpg files and the other with 12 jpg files in it, and mail those to yourself. Again, one will be sent, and one should fail.

 

Keep repeating this process until you are down to mailing two zip files with one jpg in it each - the one that fails will contain your problem file.

 

Number of e-mails required to identify the problem jpg file: 14. It's still quite a few, but better than zipping each one of them individually its own zip file then mailing 100 e-mails to yourself.

 

During this process, if both e-mails for a particular step are both successfully sent, then the problem isn't with the jpg files - it's something odd about how they've been assembled in the large zip file.

 

Side question: I noticed on the gmail sire that e-mail attachments are limited in size to 10MB. Factoring in e-mail headers and overhead, the effective real size of an attachment that can be sent can be somewhere between 6 and 10MB. How large is the zip file containing your 100 jpgs?

[TCH-Thomas]

Good idea. Why didn´t I think that.

As for the filesize of the 100 pics...I´ll be back with it.