in case nobody else noticed it, there was a mail worm released today

Thu Jan 29 04:05:55 UTC 2004

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On 
> Behalf Of Roger Marquis
> Sent: January 28, 2004 10:37 PM
> To: nanog at trapdoor.merit.edu
> Subject: Re: in case nobody else noticed it, there was a mail 
> worm released today
> 
> 
> > (Note: I really do not want this to degenerate into another rant 
> > against vendor M;
> 
> Sorry for not sharing your disinterest in the actual reasons 
> we continue to see these viruses and trojans infecting MS 
> and, for all intents and purposes, only MS operating systems.

If Microsoft is the problem, you care to tell me why I haven't gotten
infected by a single one of those emailed viruses/worms/trojans despite
years of running MS software? (And for that matter, neither have my
parents... Apparently, years of yelling at them that 3+ meg binary
"Christmas cards" from their friends were not worth opening, or their
friends learned the hard way and hence stopped sending them)

I don't think my MS software is any different from anyone else's, except
that
A) I don't open .SCR attachments 
B) I actually believe Windows/Office Update is for me, not for the random
dude/gal working down at the Burger King down the street.

So why is it that idiots doing/not doing these things can't be the problem,
but MS must be?

And, care to tell me why, as someone else pointed out, if I were to switch
to Evolution on your random GNU/Linux distribution, someone couldn't write a
similar worm. The reason they don't do it is because there isn't a critical
mass of Evolution/GNU/Linux/glibcX.Y to make a big stink... And there is
such a critical mass for MS.

Let me put it this way: if you know one bank has 100 million dollars in the
vault, and another has 5000 dollars, wouldn't you expect most of the bank
robbers to focus on robbing the first bank, irrelevant of whether the first
bank's fault is better protected than the second's?

Vivien
-- 
Vivien M.
vivienm at dyndns.org
Assistant System Administrator
Dynamic Network Services, Inc.
http://www.dyndns.org/ 