The pattern is longer than you remember;-)...
>From Brant's message Sat, 06 May 2000 00:38:29 +0000:
}
}I think I'm starting to see a pattern emerging in email viruses.
}
}Melissa: Uses script to read user's address book to get the email
}addresses of new victims.
}ILOVEYOU: Uses script to read user's address book to get the email
}addresses of new victims.
}
}What method do you think the next email virus is going to use if
}Microsoft doesn't stop scripts from reading people's address books? Why
}didn't MS plug this hole after Melissa?
}
}Brant
The first of these "worm/virus/addressbookmailers" was the IBM PROFS
"Chrismas Card" caper that occurred some time in the early 1990's,
long before MS willfully adopted the design.
((Aside: Do you suppose that MS wants to be like IBM so much that
they are making all the same mistakes in the same serial order?))
Seems to me that this beloved "feature" (giving root privs to random
EMail messages) should (by now) now be fully discredited, and should
be destined for extinction, if only the customers will accept its
disappearance in trade for an absence of a continuing flood of these
$6,000,000,000 economic loss episodes.
This is a perfect proof of a conjecture made by Hasan Azbekan back in
the mid 1960's that "The Triumph of Technology is: Can Implies Shall".
There is no way to stop this kind of thing repeating and repeating
until the easily subverted facility disappears from the Internet. And
as long as the customers demand it, it will continue;-)... It is easy
to blame the vendors, but they are trapped into selling what the
customers demand. So, the fault lies with the customers choices;-)...
And, they, led by the Fortune 2000, have rewarded MS handsomely for
creating the fertile ground for propagation.
For myself, I am contributing to the solution by never ever running
any kind of MS mail tool, ever again. You see, I do not blame MS for
this. I blame all the users of MS Mail tools for buying into the
game, and I am doing all that I can to make sure that I do not pay the
price for their disregard for their own safety and security.
I am pleased to say that I have not knowingly received a single copy
of the "LOVE BUG", even via mailing lists, though I do have to admit
to a certain sense of being unloved because of this great lack;-)...
Cheers...\Stef
