Solved Suspected malicious email - Can I move to a Flashdrive Folder Unopened

[sassofalco]

I have an email sitting in my Hotmail Junk Mail folder which is causing concern. Because of my email security settings, that is the Folder that this message has been rightfully delivered to....

The sender's name, email address and subject line are authentic, however when looking at the Junk Mail Properties, I note that the email is merely a means for delivering a rather large [8717KB] PDF - there is no message shown in the body of the email to indicate what the PDF contains.

What I would like to do is move or copy the unopened email and attachmentto a Flashdrive, and then delete it from the Hotmail Junk Mail folder of my email account, thus isolating it completely.

Is there any way in which I can do this without opening the email or it's attachment?

 

[Golden]

Hi,

I'm not sure whether the attachment can be moved without opening the message, but perhaps you might consider installing a trial (non activated version) of Windows 7 inside a virtual machine, and then accessing your Hotmail account from within the VM? If the attachment goes nuclear on you, chances are that only the VM is compromised, which is easily taken care of by simply deleting it.

Regards,
Golden

 

[sassofalco]

Hi,

I'm not sure whether the attachment can be moved without opening the message, but perhaps you might consider installing a trial (non activated version) of Windows 7 inside a virtual machine, and then accessing your Hotmail account from within the VM? If the attachment goes nuclear on you, chances are that only the VM is compromised, which is easily taken care of by simply deleting it.

Regards,
Golden

Hey Golden,

...apologies about my tardiness in getting back to you....too much good stuff on the go at the moment.

OK, problem solved, first by firing up my older Laptop with Vista OS as a 'sacrificial lamb', then doing as you suggested with trial W7 to an external slave Partition. Opened the Hotmail account online, and by going to the email properties, managed to determine the originator/writer source.

Opened the email with a bit of hesitation to find that it was a very sensitive document, maliciously sent out by the writer in an effort to discredit another person. To be honest, I'd been expecting some sort of 'viral-bomb' from that source and was thankful that that was not the case.

The document, email etc that I had no right to be a party too, was successfully immediately deleted, the W7 trial was aborted and the Laptop with Vista survived the ordeal. Thanks Mate

Cheers,Tony

 

[Golden]

Good to hear