David,
Thanks for your message. I followed the designated site well past June
2000, but I am in no mood to quibble with your version of history.
How do you feel about filtering winsock connections to TCP port 25 in
a way such as would allow the user to confirm that a particular program
could always do so, but would be asked to approve the connection when
programs without prior approval do so? That would take care of the
SirCam strain.
A general winsock version of the tcpwrappers utility might go a long
way, too, but might be subject to other forms of abuse.
Cheers,
James
> Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:33:43 -0700
> From: "David Lemson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> > The correct solution is to find out who at Microsoft refuses to put
> > security safeguards on the address book(s) and allows scripts to
> > fully send messages instead of queueing for approval. I find it
> > amazing that they haven't implemented such easy fixes in the past
> > couple of years, after things started getting really bad.
>
> Good news. This exact safeguard has been available as an add-on "patch"
> for Outlook 98 and Outlook 2000 since June 2000, and it is built-in to
> Outlook XP (aka Outlook 2002, released several months ago). People
> using Outlook 98 or 2000 with the patch, or anyone using Outlook XP will
> not propagate viruses that run as script within Outlook.
> You can read more at:
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/Office/previous/outlook/downloads/security.htm
> (related to the patch for Outlook 98 and 2000)
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/Office/it/solutions/security.htm (related to
> features in Office XP - information on this feature begins on page 15)
>
> David