Infection method?

Take a look at my profile, there is an animated gif of soda popinsky laughing at you. Right click it, and on windows at least, it will tell you its a jpeg. Navigate to the address its at,
http://www.antionline.com/images/upl...8396_photo.jpg
and it has a jpg file extension, yet its still animated. AFAIK, animated jpegs don't exist. So I downloaded it to see, but the extension changes to gif in the download window.

I was just wondering, is that a server configuration by AO to make it appear to be a jpeg, or am I just weird? Couldn't a server make the extension of a file on their server appear to be jpeg and change to exe during the download, similar to how this shows it to be jpeg then switches to gif?

I think I'm missin something here, just an idea :)

after reading your post, i got interested so i tried to replicate it here on my computer and here are the results of my 4 experiments...

Experiment 1:
renamed a jpeg to gif (my aim buddy icon)
opened it in internet explorer

results:
the picture was still animated...

rationale:
the picture files have a header in it telling programs what type of picture data that they contain...

Experiment 2:
rename an exe to a jpg

results:
internet explorer did not open anything, rather, it gave me the white box with a red "x" in it saying that a picture could not be found/displayed

Rationale:
Internet explorer looked at the file looking for picture data (based on the file extension) and was not able to find any picture data

Experiment 3:
rename an html to a jpg

Results:
Internet explorer once again did not open anything...

Rationale:
microsoft must have realized that people would eventually try this so they made it so that internet explorer would look only for data based on the extension... furthermore, because jpg and gif are both in the Picture "family" and both can be handled by internet explorer and the picture is animated

Experiment 4:
rename an exe to html

results:
the compiled machine code was shown

rationale:
file types are defined in the registry as well as what to do with them...

as you can see i typed this while i was doing my experiments, so you can see the progression of my thoughts and opinions.

if someone could, please replicate these experiments with firefox/mozilla/netscape/safari/anything else that i forgot

heh I been using a gif for a while and never noticed that :)
I know your only suppoused to be able to upload .jpg so maybe that has something to do with it? because it is the only acceptable file type AO automatically changes the extension if you upload another graphic type?

v_Ln

Hi

I don't think file Extensio would matter much.......I mean you can make a .gif file just a File(test.gif ro just test) without Extension and open it in Explorer it would Still Work.......Convert it to any other file extension that is not currently in use like pic.soda and it will still animate in the IE........it's just that a few file extensions are made to behave differently for example if you make a .gif a .htm and open it in the IE it wouldn't work......it would make IE behave it would do with a Htm page..read it's content........i mean give a gif any new extension or any file extension except those like .exe, .dll,.htm etc it will still work......

And AO Converting it from .gif to jpg i am with valhallen ..until someone gives a better reason :D e.g mnstgrl...............and Firefox is showing it as .jpg and downloading it as .jpg

and Never Trust Internet Explorer with Picture File Formats......:D...try this trick it will make a .jpg download as .bmp in Internet Explorer........open any web page containing a .jpg picture.....let the IE window open .....Goto Tools--> Internet Options now in the "Internet Options" Dialog Box........Press the Three Buttons First "Delete Cookies" , "Delete File" ,"Clear History" press ok rhen return to the page contaning the .jpg picture ....now try to save the pic to your computer and see ...it would just let you save the picture as .bmp........

--Goo Luck--