Klarinet Archive - Posting 000533.txt from 1998/01

From: Mark Charette <charette@-----.com>
Subj: Re: Word Attachments--Watch out for Macro Viruses!!!!!!
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 00:11:34 -0500

Edwin V. Lacy wrote:
>
> On Sat, 10 Jan 1998, Benjamin A. Maas wrote:
>
> > I think I got it off of a internet news-group, but I don't know. I
> > STRONGLY urge everybody to check out their computers to make sure these
> > word documents aren't infected.
>
> This will probably start another one of those never-ending bogus warning
> about viruses. Every day when I log on to my e-mail system, I read a
> statement placed there by the system administrator: "You cannot get a
> virus by merely reading e-mail."

I make my living playing on/with computers. Your sys admin may
be tecnically correct in your place of business depending on how
your mail system is set up, but nowadays, in the age of HTML and
MIME aware e-mail readers, "it ain't necessarily so". Just _reading_
the mail is innocuous, but how many of you know how your mail readers
are configured? If you use the defaults on most Web browsers then
it _is_ possible for a rogue program to automatically put itself on
your system when you open your mail.

There are viruses _attached_ to mail messages in the form of word
processor macros and executables (how many people got an executable
attachment this Christmas with a cute graphic Christmas card attached?
It _could_ have been a horrible program). HTML enabled readers can
have a URL encoded into it that will download a Java program, or
worse, an ActiveX control onto your computer. The security holes in
various versions of these laguages are well known - each subsequent
version gets better, so the computer crackers out there keep trying
harder.

The original CDROMS for Word 6 or 7 on PCs had a macro virus in the
normal.dot file (an innocuous one, but rather embarrasing for
MicroSoft when they found out they had distributed millions of copies),
--
Mark Charette | "This is a very democratic organization, so let's
charette@-----. All those who disagree with me, raise
MIKA Systems, Inc.| their hands." - Eugene Ormandy
Webmaster of http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet, The Clarinet Pages