How to tell if an email attachment has a virus

Certain compressed files are also not safe to open. If you open a compressed file, and it has an EXE file inside, you should only run it if you absolutely know what it is and who it came from. Sometimes, email attachments will look safe at first glance, but if you look closer, you will notice the file name has two extensions. Any file with a double extension is most likely a virus, and you should never open it to be safe. If you want to make sure, you can scan it first.

Then right-click the file and select Scan with Microsoft Defender. When the scan is complete, you will see the results at the top of the Settings window. If you accidentally opened an attachment with a dangerous file extension, you should change your email password right away. You should also contact your bank or credit card company and let them know what happened, so they will be on the lookout for suspicious charges to your accounts.

Otherwise, you should download and install anti-virus software on your computer. To find out more, check out our list of the best anti-virus programs for Windows PC.

If you think your computer is still infected with a virus, check out our guide on how to remove malware from a Windows 10 computer. Comodo : Comodo offers a number of products specifically geared towards improving email security. This includes a free antispam gateway , which uses cloud-based filtering to block spam, phishing emails, and malicious attachments on IMAP and SMTP servers.

Additionally, Comodo Antivirus for Linux includes a built-in mail gateway—one of the only email security systems that supports Linux. The tool also supports scanning encrypted messages—an important bonus for those that use tools like Pretty Good Privacy PGP to encrypt and secure their email communications. Every desktop email user should have an antivirus program with email scanning installed.

Share It: 0. The only problem is that the Word document actually contains a malicious script that gets activated via the Macro function.

An example of the described email virus is provided below. Malicious emails that contain attached "Invoice" file were used for Locky ransomware distribution. Love sports? Then you must be aware of sport-themed spam. Lately, researchers from Kaspersky noticed an increase [6] in emails targeting users interested in the European Football Championship, upcoming World Cups in and , as well as Olympic Games in Brazil. According to experts, the Trojan is set to download more malware on the computer.

See an example of the malicious message below. Malicious spam targets FIFA fans - this is how an email containing malicious attachment can look like. Cyber frauds do not forget that terrorism is one of those subjects of topical interest. Not surprisingly, this theme is also used in malicious spam. We provide an example of such email message below. Reportedly, such type of spam is generally used to steal personal data, carry out DDoS attacks and spread malware. The picture reveals emails that exploit the theme of terrorism.

Researchers detected one more email campaign that distributed malicious Word documents. It turns out, these documents also contain infectious macros that download and run CryptXXX ransomware as soon as the victim activates the required function.

The message warns the victim about non-existent threats such as security breaches that were ostensibly prevented and suggests checking the report attached to the message. Of course, the attachment is malicious. Such emails were used to deliver CryptXXX ransomware to victims. The easiest way to trick the user into opening a malicious attachment is to create a deceptive email account that is almost identical to one owned by a legitimate company.

Using such email virus accounts, scammers attack users with nicely composed emails that carry a malicious payload in a file attached to them.

The example below shows an email that was sent by scammers who pretended to be working at Europcar [7]. Cyber criminals often pretend to be someone they're not. In this example, you can see how scammers try to push malware while pretending to be Europcar representatives. The example provided below shows what messages were used in an attack against clients of A1 Telekom company. Further analysis revealed that these files contained Crypt0l0cker virus.

This is an example of malicious email spam that was aimed at A1 Telekom users. The bogus link in the message points to a file that downloads Crypt0L0cker ransomware virus.

Recently, scammers started using a new trick that helps them to swindle money from unsuspecting victims in a few minutes. Sadly, if you rush to obey commands and not check the little details before doing so, you can end up transferring company's money to a criminal or, even worse, infecting the entire computer network with malware. Another trick that can convince you to open such malicious attachment is pretending to be your colleague.

This trick might be successful if you are working in a big company and you do not know all of your colleagues. You can see a couple of examples of such phishing emails below.

Otherwise, you can end up installing malware on the entire computer system or sending money to scammers!