Sources close to Microsoft suggest they are working on a patch to fix this
Outlook Bug
PW
On Mon, 30 Apr 2001, Heracles wrote:
> Found this little gem. Just thought someone might be interested.
>
> FOOT-AND-MOUTH BELIEVED TO BE FIRST VIRUS UNABLE TO SPREAD THROUGH
> MICROSOFT OUTLOOK
> Researchers Shocked to Finally Find Virus That E-mail App Doesn't Like
> Atlanta, Ga. (SatireWire.com) - Scientists at the
> Centers for Disease Control and Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center
> today confirmed that foot-and-mouth disease cannot be
> spread by Microsoft's Outlook email application, believed to be the
> first time the program has ever failed to propagate a major
> virus.
>
> "Frankly, we've never heard of a virus that couldn't spread through
> Microsoft Outlook, so our findings were, to say the least,
> unexpected," said Clive Sarnow, director of the CDC's infectious disease
> unit.
>
> The study was immediately hailed by British officials, who said it will
> save millions of pounds and thousands of man hours. "Up until
> now we have, quite naturally, assumed that both foot-and-mouth and mad
> cow were spread by Microsoft Outlook," said Nick
> Brown, Britain's Agriculture Minister. "By eliminating it, we can focus
> our resources elsewhere."
>
> However, researchers in the Netherlands, where foot-and-mouth has
> recently appeared, said they are not yet prepared to
> disqualify Outlook, which has been the progenitor of viruses such as "I
> Love You," "Bubbleboy," "Anna Kournikova," and "Naked
> Wife," to name but a few.
>
> Said Nils Overmars, director of the Molecular Virology Lab at Leiden
> University: "It's not that we don't trust the research, it's just
> that as scientists, we are trained to be skeptical of any finding that
> flies in the face of established knowledge. This one flies in the
> face like a blind drunk sparrow."
>
> Executives at Microsoft, meanwhile, were equally skeptical, insisting
> that Outlook's patented Virus Transfer Protocol (VTP) has
> proven virtually pervious to any virus. The company, however, will issue
> a free VTP patch if it turns out the application is not
> vulnerable to foot-and-mouth.
>
> Such an admission would be embarrassing for the software giant, but
> Symantec virologist Ariel Kologne insisted that no one is
> more humiliated by the study than she is. "Only last week, I had a
> reporter ask if the foot-and-mouth virus spreads through
> Microsoft Outlook, and I told him, 'Doesn't everything?'" she recalled.
> "Who would've thought?"
>
> Stay well and happy
> Heracles
>
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