As a general rule, I don't pass on virus warnings to whole lists that I
belong to. Of the many virus warnings I get regularly via e-mail, a
sizeable proportion are debunked by another of my correspondents a day or
two later.
But I do find this one credible: it comes from a friend who, in his turn,
got it from the head of MIS in the company where he works. It claims that
if Internet Explorer 5.0 (or Office 2000) is even so much as installed on
your computer, you may be liable to serious virus trouble.
The same correspondent appended a fascinating and thoroughly alarming
article by James Gleick from "Slate". The article suggests that the gaping
security holes in Windows result not just from carelessness (this software
isn't right for networked and internet-linked PCs, but that won't matter
much and it will make us lots of money), but from deliberate strategic
decisions. I haven't attached the entire article, but I'll forward it if
anyone asks privately.
Cheers
Eric Van Tassel
e-mail:
>Dear all:
>
> Email viruses are now spreading WITHOUT THE USER OPENING ANY ATTACHMENT.
>
> Personal computers running Internet Explorer (IE) version 5.0 and/or
Microsoft Office 2000 are vulnerable to virus attacks using most email
systems, even if the email recipient opens no attachments. You don't even
have to use IE; just have it installed with the default security settings.
>
> If you have not closed the hole, you can receive viruses (and spread
them) by viewing or previewing malicious email without opening any
attachment, or by visiting a malicious web site. The problem is caused by a
programming bug in an Internet Explorer ActiveX control called
scriptlet.typelib.
> This is by far the fastest growing virus distribution problem and ripe
for a large destructive event - at least as large as the ILOVEYOU virus.
Updating your Norton or Macaffee virus detection software, while important,
is not an effective solution for this problem. You must also close the
hole. Please take a precautionary step and run the correction script
located at the following URL:
http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/iebuild/scriptlet/en/scriptlet.htm
> Steps:
>1. Double-click on the above URL.
>2. Hit the "next" button on the right side of screen.
>3. Hit "next" again.
>4. When it asks if you want to run this program from it's current
location, click "yes".
>5. When it asks "do you want to install and run..." click "yes"
>6. It will then ask one more time "Do you want to install this update?"
Click yes.
>7. Done!
END