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Re: Mobile code security (was Re: rr style scanning of non-customers)

  • From: William Allen Simpson
  • Date: Mon Jun 16 13:23:38 2003

"Christopher L. Morrow" wrote:
> yea, if my sister in-law (who barely knows what 'computer' means most
> times) can come to the conclusion that:
> 1) all email viruses of note are outlook targetted
> 2) everyone with outlook gets viruses
> 
> therefore
> 
> 3) why would anyone ever run outlook
> 
> why can't multibillion dollar companies figure that out? it does mystify
> me :)
> 
When I visited for my birthday last week, I discovered my 15-year-old 
niece's Comcast attached machine was infected wih multiple things, one 
of which (I never figured out how) would even prevent the machine from 
being shutdown (turned it into restart).  From the activity lights, it 
was pretty clearly sending a lot of traffic, sitting in the basement 
unattended, with the screen blanked. 

As far as I could tell, the vector was AOL IM.  So, it's not only M$ 
and outlook.  Why oh why are vendors shipping with defaults like no 
restrictions on "buddy" downloads and execution?
-- 
William Allen Simpson
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32