> >        Your access provider is an idiot then...think about it, what's to
> >stop me from changing the subject heading from "Good Times" to "Free Bee
> >Supplies"? Or is the whole virus program dependant on the subject heading
> >to trigger the virus in an ASCII file? And how can you execute and ASCII
> >file anyway? 8-}
> >
> It is (or was) possible to triger an action just by displaying an ASCII file!
> If you were using an ANSI (aka VT100) terminal AND your mail reader did not
> intercept escape sequences AND you were running a common shell or command
> interpreter... then a devious message could do just about anything it wanted.
 
No there is no way to have a devious mail message execute commands as you imply
on a VT100.  DEC was smart enough to leave the possibility out. I suppose it
may be possible that some terminal programs, VT100 clones or other ANSI
terminals may have added something.  About the closest you could do with a
VT100 is getting the terminal to send the answerback buffer but there's no way
to load that remotely, you just got whatever the owner manually entered
(if anything).
 
You could, however, get a (real) VT100 in pretty strange states by certain
escape sequences but nothing that could trigger action.
 
-Mike