This is from the Red Rock Digest, a list to which I subscribe, on the love virus. "Some notes on Microsoft viruses, economic history, and the rational side of Luddism, plus another batch of URL's. "I received about 60 copies of the latest Microsoft e-mail virus and its variants. How many did you get? Fortunately I manage my e-mail with Berkeley mailx and Emacs keyboard macros, so I wasn't at risk. But if we're talking about billions of dollars in damage, which equates roughly to millions of lost work days, then I think that we and Microsoft need to have a little talk. "Reading the press reports, Microsoft's stance toward this situation has been disgraceful. Most of their sound bites have been sophistry designed to disassociate the company from any responsibility for the problem. One version goes like this quote from Scott Culp of Microsoft Public Relations, excuse me, I mean Microsoft Security Response Center: This is a general issue, not a Microsoft issue. You can write a virus for any platform. (New York Times 5/5/00) "Notice the public relations technology at work here: defocusing the issue so as to move attention away from the specific vulnerabilities of Microsoft's applications architecture and toward the fuzzy concept of "a virus". Technologists will understand the problem here, but most normal people will not. Mr. Culp also says this (CNET 5/5/00): This is by-design behavior, not a security vulnerability. "More odd language. It's like saying, "This is a rock, not something that can fall to the ground". It's confusing to even think about it. Even though Microsoft had been specifically informed of the security vulnerability in its software, it had refused to fix it. Microsoft even tried to blame its problem on Netscape, which had fixed it: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1820959.html "The next step is to blame the users. The same Mr. Culp read on the radio the text of a warning that the users who spread the virus had supposedly ignored. That warning concludes with a statement to the effect that you shouldn't execute attachments from sources that you do not trust. He read that part kind of fast, as you might expect, given that the whole point of this virus is that people receive an attachment from a person who has included them in their address book. This particular blame-shifting tactic is particularly disingenuous given that the virus spread rapidly through Microsoft itself, to the point that the company had to block all incoming e-mail (Wall Street Journal 5/5/00). "Similarly, CNET (5/4/00) quoted an unnamed "Microsoft representative" as saying that companies must educate employees "not to run a program from an origin you don't trust". Notice the nicely ambiguous word "origin". The virus arrives in your mailbox clearly labeled as having been sent by a particular individual with whom you probably have an established relationship. It bears no other signs of its "origin" that an ordinary user will be able to parse, short of executing the attachment. "So what on earth is Microsoft doing allowing attachments to run code in a full-blown scripting language that can, among many other things, invisibly send e-mail? Says the "Microsoft representative", We include scripting technologies because our customers ask us to put them there, and they allow the development of business-critical productivity applications that millions of our customers use. "There needs to be a moratorium on expressions such as "customers ask us to". Does that mean all of the customers? Or just some of them? Notice the some/all ambiguity that is another core technology of public relations. Do these "customers" really specifically asked for fully general scripts that attachments can execute, or do they only ask for certain features that can be implemented in many ways, some of which involve attachments that execute scripts? Do the customers who supposedly ask for these crazy things understand the consequences of them? Do they ask for them to be turned on by default, so that every customer in the world gets the downside of them so that a few customers can more conveniently get the upside? And notice how the "Microsoft representative" defocuses the issue again, shifting from the specific issue of scripts that can be executed by attachments to the fuzzy concept of "scripting technologies", as if anybody were suggesting that scripting technologies, as such, in general, were to blame. "Microsoft shouldn't be broken up. It should be shut down. -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/