On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 15:53:56 GMT, Ken wrote:


Richard;
Your statement is in reference to systems that have been infected by a
virus or worm. The O/S has nothing to do with who the virus's are sent to.
I set up several e-mail accounts on yahoo and posted to several groups.
I did pick a subject that would generate responses, after 7 or 8 hours the
e-mail accounts were filled with messages with the virus attachments. I
don't use Microsoft products, So I don't know how Outlook handles replies
to usenet posts. That is, if it treats it as an E-mail address and adds it
to an address book. Although its possible that the subject I picked could
have upset a few enough to intentionally send me an E-mail with a attached
virus, I would tend to think that its based on address books.
I have set several more accounts up on Yahoo, trying to narrow down
which groups seem most prone to generating virus e-mails.

Ken

Hi Ken,

Yours is simply the same chorus before you: "It ain't about MS."

You then snap the rug from under yourself (how do you do that?) by
saying virus (what does a virus infect except an OS?).

It is the height of denial to portray these attacks as coming from an
individual sitting in the bedroom sending emails, or a group of
closeted individuals pushing send buttons. That traffic would be
snuffed so fast where MS would have sheriffs at their door in a
millisecond.

A virus by definition infects the OS. There are many out there built
into the backbone of the internet. Some are router only OS's, others
are Linux machines, Unix machines, Sun Machines, and certainly MS
machines. Does it take Rocket Surgery to diagnose that of those, one
OS source (fill in the blank) in particular has been announcing
security failures in their designs (and I am not talking about the
ubiquitous OE/IE problems so many snuggle up to as it nibbles into
their tender flesh) 2 a week? This is up from an average of once a
week for at least two years. If the backbone escaped attack (and it
is certainly more geared for following events than users are); it
follows someone ELSE's machine has become infected and is acting in
part of a conspiracy to accomplish this work through proxy.

Guess what they have as an OS? Care to wager it is an unprotected
system that has been requiring patches on a weekly basis for years?

All of this is classic symptomatology of recent attacks and hardly a
novel concept drug up from the deep recesses of my paranoia.

There are two classes of MS users. Those who are infected but live
through its effects without obvious harm (except for lost bandwidth
capacity they blame on "general conditions"). A century ago they
would go by the name Typhoid Mary. Then there are those who are
infected but are being hammered by the virus AND spreading infection.
There is a third and fourth class that barely wiggle the digits: the
lucky and the smart.

Eventually, through Darwinian thinning, the smart population will
become dominant, but only if they can crawl over the mountains of
corpses that litter the -ahem- netscape.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC