Advisory: Scanning of Stuffit files by the Sophos Anti-Virus engine

Sophos Anti-Virus engine version 2.37 (the September 2006 version) no longer scans inside StuffIt archive files. The engine will now always return a message that the StuffIt archive format cannot be scanned, in the same way that is done with other file formats when there is doubt as to whether they contain malicious code. Older versions of the Sophos Anti-Virus engine made best efforts to unpack and scan older versions of StuffIt files. However, the engine has been unable to unpack newer versions, and has occasionally experienced scanning errors with StuffIt files.

This change does not affect default behavior for Sophos Anti-Virus. Sophos Anti-Virus will continue to scan the contents of any StuffIt file as soon as it is unpacked and saved to disk, so that customers are protected at the desktop from any malware within StuffIt files.

PureMessage for Windows/Exchange is no longer able to block StuffIt files by filetype.
In order to block StuffIT files, ensure PureMessage for Windows/Exchange is configured to block by attachment name, files with the name *.SIT. However, if the filename extension of the StuffIt file has been changed, then it will not be blocked by using *.SIT.
SAV Interface will now return a SOPHOS_SAVI_ERROR_NOT_SUPPORTED message when encountering a StuffIt file.
The -sit command line parameter can no longer be used with SAV32CLI.

If you need more information or guidance, then please contact technical support.

Article ID: 17128
Created: 22 Aug 2006
Last updated: 23 Oct 2006

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Advisory: Scanning of Stuffit files by the Sophos Anti-Virus engine

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Advisory: Scanning of Stuffit files by the Sophos Anti-Virus engine