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
> 
> 

Reply via email to