The good folks at F-Secure uncover the first Windows 7 security fail … and it’s a classic. The issue in question is nothing new. In fact, it’s been around for so long that I didn’t even bother checking to see if it had been fixed. You see, in Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista, Explorer used to Hide extensions for known file types. And virus writers used this “feature” to make people mistake executables for stuff such as document files. The trick was to rename VIRUS.EXE to VIRUS.TXT.EXE or VIRUS.JPG.EXE, and Windows would hide the .EXE part of the filename. Additionally, virus writers would change the icon inside the executable to look like the icon of a text file or an image, and everybody would be fooled. Surely this won’t work in Windows 7. Lets try. source: blogs.zdnet.com
Keep in mind tho any user that is using UAC and actually reading the prompts will have no problem, I think this is more an issue of ignorance then anything else.
Wierd The first thing I do when I am done installing windows is set the option in folder view to show exstension. I thought everyone did this.
I have download a program that had a readme with it that's was a doc.exe and had a note pad icon from like windows 98, but I had show unknown file ext on so I saw it for what it was, only people that are no to skilled in this side of things wouldn't pick up on it