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For the last several years we've blocked a variety of viruses, worms, and trojan horses by reversibly "defanging" potentially dangerous viruses (see the Fall 2001 Computing News article, "More File Extensions Defanged," at http://cc.uoregon.edu/cnews/fall2001/defang.html ).
The emergence of the SoBig.E virus, which uses a zip attachment payload, has caused us to expand the set of file extensions that get defanged when emailed through Darkwing, Gladstone or Oregon.
Just like other potentially infective attachments, the two new extensions, .zip and .zi, will also be defanged by having the suffix .txt added to them.
What if you want to restore a legitimate zip attachment? If you receive a legitimate .zip or .zi file and wish to restore it to its original state, simply rename the file by removing the ".txt" extension that was added to the end of the filename. But if you choose to do this, be careful! Before making such changes, we recommend you verify that the sender intentionally sent the email message and attachment to you.