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When someone visits a website, javascript opens an email client and pre-fill it with a return email address, send whatever contents the person wants to collect e.g. email addresses in an address book or inbox/outbox content and automatically closed the email client.
The reason I'm asking is because something like the above happened to me and I'm trying to figure out if it was a trojan or just simple javascript and also to stay away from the person who did this as it is someone I know.
You can communicate with the email client only because the browser has been "told" what the "default email" of the host computer is. That is, if you go into any browser's settings, you will see the default email program, or none, if none has been set. This is what makes "mailto" links work. This is also why it fails as a method for a contact link if the person uses a web mail service, like yahoo, gmail, etc.
But as for reading the address book, populating the email, sending it, closing it - this is some action on the host computer that Javascript **shouldn't** have access to, it's a security issue. An ActiveX control might be able to do this if the user has allowed it permissions to do so.
My guess would be that it's not the web site that has a virus, it's the host computer that has a virus or malware.
But I could be wrong.
OK, assuming that the host computer has virus or malware, what really intrigued me is that an email address of a person I know was populated as return address and that email address is not in my address book nor did I click on mailto: link. I'd imagine that if virus or malware is active then surely the hacker would want the information back but the email was pointing to supposedly someone I know which buffled me.
I know there is a new product called "M-agic Li-st Bot" (don't go to the website) which supposed to steal email address with javascript. So I thought may be the person was using that to build a list.
In any case, I'm not feeling great about it :<
