Antivirus and SE Files

[swertel]

In most antivirus scanners, the user has the option to exclude certain file types to scan. In order to increase performance, I have heard that SE files should be excluded. Since SE does not include any macros that could be infected, I see how this is a safe choice. But, what about the virus infected macros that are within the embedded Word and Excel files. How do they get scanned if I exclude the SE files?

Thanks,

--Scott

 

[jwillison]

I would think as long as they are scanned before embedding they should be clean after embedding. Since they are embedded in an SE file the .xls extension is not available for id'ing the file to infect.

Alternatively you could just link files into SE, then there's a separate spreadsheet file that will be scanned even if SE files aren't.