"Dean" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Marc D. Williams" wrote:
> > Y'know, there was an article in today's paper mentioning something about
> > this. One of the reasons for the amazing spread of the virus is
> > Outlook. Outlook, by default, will automatically forward messages
> > so when folks did their mail thing they unknowingly sent out this virus
> > to all the users in their addressbook.
> Don't ya just LOVE the wonderful benefits of Microsoft integration!!
That's a scripting feature that is enabled by default. Microsoft has made
enabling this the default -- probably not as well though out as it should
be. But...
> > Other mailers such as Netscape Mail, Eudora, etc. don't do that
> > since mail forwarding usually requires manual intervention.
Is it really fair to say that "only Microsoft products can be affected"
though? I've played a bit with extensible environments (admittedly not on my
SurvPC though :) and I know that, while Microsoft is a popular target,
they're not the only one that could potentially be affected. ANY
programmable environment could be exploited if not secured.
> > The virus wouldn't have spread so quickly if it weren't for Outlook.
> > It only took hours to spread around the world.
> >
> > "Microsoft's Windows operating system appears on more than 85 percent
> > of personal computers. More diversity, experts say, would likely have
> > slowed the virus by at least a few hours,
Er, wait a second. "It took only hours to spread" and "diversity ... would
have slowed the virus by at least a few hours". Now I'm suddenly not sure if
"hours" is a short time span or a long one. Let's be consistent. The virus
was MS-specific. That hardly means that all are, nor will they all be. The
first live virus I encountered targeted Macs.
> How ironic that the US gov't agencies were hit so very hard with this
> one. Aren't they suing MS for something about forcing bad software on
> people...<hehe> -Dean
They're being sued for monopolistic and illegal tactics. Not bad software. I
don't like Microsoft's business tactics, but their software works well
enough.
One thing that concerns me a bit here is we're almost giving the little
virus-writing weasel some hero status here. Is it suddenly cool to write
destructive software so long as it only targets certain products? The damage
done here wasn't to Microsoft. It was to thousands of end-users and
unfortunate techies (like many of us) who got to spend long hours late at
night cleaning up the mess so the suits didn't have to look at it in the
morning. We need to be educated and fight these things, not glorify the
slime that produce them. The unfortunate thing is that the ones most hurt
are those that can least afford the cleanup: Schools, volunteer
organizations and people with real work to do.
The author is no hero. The next one might not be Microsoft-specific, nor as
selective in what it trashes. (I suspect the author isn't exactly a
technical genius either having perused the code.)
- Bob
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