Oh, I agree that we have to take responsibility for our own actions. I am absolutely
responsible for allowing the macro to run.
After I mistakenly ran the macro, my first thought was to neutralize it -- to stop it
from spreading further -- by disabling the automatic running of macros.
Unfortunately, Word paid more attention to what the macro wanted, than what *I* the
user wanted. I said "DON'T RUN MACROS!!". The macro said "run macros." Guess who
Word listened to? Do you see the catch? It's not a matter of not being responsible.
I take the blame. But MS made it much easier for the virus to get the upper hand.
The don't-run-macros option is only halfway useful if you can only turn it off, but
can never turn it on again.
At that time I knew very little about macros. The VBA editor seemed non-intuitive to
use. I tried to remove the virus by deleting the VBA script, and that took several
hours of research in MS Word How-To books. I finally ended up going out to a store
and buying the virus clean-up software.
--
Doug Sauder
Software Engineer
Broadsoft, Inc
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Castro, Edison M. (PCA) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, May 12, 2000 08:45
> To: 'Doug Sauder'; Castro, Edison M. (PCA); [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: VIRUS WARNING
>
>
> Let's see if this reasoning holds water. Imagine your favorite OS, suppose
> that I send you
> a .pl file (Perl Script). You then make the "mistake" of saving it to the
> file system and then
> proceed to running the script. What do you think that script can do?. What
> will you have to do
> to fix your problem?. This is completely analogous to changing the default
> selection on the
> "Do you want to run this document's macros" dialog from "NO" to "YES".
>
> We have become a society of excuses people, nothing is our fault. It is
> always somebody
> else's fault.
>
> WE HAVE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR OWN ACTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
>
> ps: if I made this stupid mistake, I will immediately check what
> macros are
> included in the
> forsaken document and delete them.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Sauder [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2000 5:55 PM
> To: Castro, Edison M. (PCA); [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: VIRUS WARNING
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Castro, Edison M. (PCA) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > That is exactly the same way that all Windows virus work. As a Windows
> > user (as well as other OSes), I can say that people have to be
> > responsible
> > for their actions. Whenever you receive any Email attachment,
> > the only way
> > that attachment can produce any damage is if you run it.
> >
> > At least in my copy of MS Word anytime I open a word document and it
> > contains
> > any macros, Word readily ask me if I want to allow the macro to
> execute.
> > Not only that, this version of Word (2000) is configured to only
> > ask me when
> > a signed (with a certificate of a trusted party) macro is included.
>
> Suppose you made the mistake of opening a Word document with a VBA (Visual
> Basic for Applications) script virus. (I did this once and I am sharing a
> real-life experience.) The VBA script turns off the option that disables
> automatically running scripts. I kid you not! Next time you open a Word
> document that contains a script, you won't be asked whether you
> want to run
> it. If you go into the options settings and set the option to disable
> running scripts, you have done nothing, because the virus script runs when
> you close the document and turns the option back off again.
>
> At least not allowing macros to disable the don't-run-macros option seems
> reasonable to me, but it seemed to have escaped the engineers who created
> Microsoft Word.
>
> Doug Sauder
> Software Engineer
> Broadsoft, Inc
>
>
