Just putting in my 2 cents. ;)
> As for what virus writers "could" put in the subject line, the amount of
> "social engineering" with most of the latest WSH viruses is laughable. When
> I saw the first virus message on the list today, even though the attachment
> wasn't there (thanks to Mike D), I knew it was a virus. This isn't rocket
> science. You might have a point, if there actually were WSH viruses going
> around that looked at all like legitimate mail, but they don't. The quality
> of social engineering with WSH viruses is much lower than with assembler
> viruses, which were often hidden in a tempting executable or screen-saver.
But that is easily fixable - if someone wrote a virus which used the same
subject as an old email which had an attachment, and said "Oops, I gave you the
wrong version, here's the most recent copy", people would be falling for it left
right and centre!
> Finally - and this is all I've got to say - this kind of attitude, in which
> you expect the end user to be irresponsible and, frankly, stupid, is the
> kind of paternalistic Politburo outlook of people who think that the masses
> must be protected from themselves. Being an adult means knowing what happens
> - and being responsible for it - when you push the button, or pull the
> trigger, or push the accelerator.
In these matters, it doesn't really matter that people *should* know - the sad
truth is that they don't. Now even if Quinn (for example) isn't the culprit,
these waves of viruses wouldn't have happened if there weren't a lot of people
who *aren't* aware of the problem, or how to fix it.
Now I'm hardly the biggest advocate of taking people's toys away because they
haven't been playing nice - I just think its not right to put unsafe options as
defaults, especially if these options are for things which are not standard in
the industry.
Even an intelligent person would be caught out by Windows inspired viruses if
they hadn't used a Windows machine in a few years, and hadn't kept up with the
news. Why? Because no sane person would expect Microsoft to have put in the
ridiculous extensions to a mail client which they have.
David
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