from http://www.theregister.co.uk/000516-000003.html
Posted 16/05/2000 3:24am by Thomas C. Greene in Washington
M$ to patch Outlook
Micro$oft bit the bullet Monday and announced plans to develop a patch
for its popular
Outlook e-mail client which will save users from themselves by blocking
those file
types most likely to contain malicious code.
Many have criticised the company for making products vulnerable to worm
viruses like
Melissa and the recent Love Bug, and for shifting the blame for such
outbreaks on
users stupid enough to open dodgy attachments (or stupid enough to trust
M$ security
engineering, depending on how you see it).
The company plans to make the patch available on its Office Update pages
starting
22 May. The strategy will be to prevent users from opening files
containing such
suffixes as .exe, .bat, .vbs and others that indicate an executable
file.
It will not affect non-executable files such as those with the
extensions .mpg, .jpg, .doc,
.txt and .htm (though html pages, while not themselves executable per
se, can contain
malicious code).
Outlook will also be altered so that if a user's address book is
accessed, a simple
pop-up will warn them, a painfully obvious enhancement suggested by US
Congressman Anthony Weiner (Democrat, New York) during a House Science
Subcommittee hearing on the Love Bug last week.
Jamie
