product liability (was: Virus Update)

[William Allen Simpson <wsimpson () greendragon com>]

Apparently, this is just another example where M$ ignored reports of 
the security vulnerability for years, and now everyone else has to pay.
Lloyd's of London is estimating the cost at $8,000,000,000 and rising.

There's a report of another security hole that Netscape fixed years ago, 
but still exists in Outlook:
  http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1820959.html

Are any of our bigger ISPs willing to initiate a class action to recover 
the costs?

Dean Robb wrote:
> At 06:56 PM 5/4/00 -0400, David Charlap wrote:
> > One of them (I think Outlook) can also auto-launch attachments when the
> > message is selected (and displayed in the preview window) and not even
> > opened.  This is a _BIG_ security hole that Microsoft has not fixed,
> > despite other virusses (like Melissa) which have already taken advantage
> > of it.
>
> There are instructions for disabling ActiveScripting in Outlook on the MS
> website.  It's enabled by default. That'll stop the attachements from being
> auto-executed.  Remember, according to their TV ads, MS exists to help the
> consumer!

WSimpson () UMich edu
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