Yet Another Virus Alert

My ever-waning faith in the survival of the species takes another plunge.

Another virus has hit the Windows world. They’re calling this one “one of the fastest-spreading email worm yet!”. It arrives in email with a subject of “hello” or “test”, and a garbage message, along with an attachment that’s an executable (or better – a zip that must be expanded then executed). It doesn’t set itself off – instead the user has to execute it. So – millions of computer users are just blindly clicking the attachment to run it! Granted, it may be addressed from someone they know (I suppose it uses Outlook address books once again) – but come on, people! Don’t run attached .exe programs – especially if they look suspicious!

Need I mention it doesn’t affect the Mac or Linux? I mean, it could – they could write an application on the Mac and mail it out – perhaps so-called “security through obsurity” would keep it from propogating as quickly. But I like to think that Mac and Linux users are smarter (and less enslaved/victimized by their computers) than to just open every attachment that shows up in their inbox.

I continue to predict a massive virus that (after replicating itself and perhaps waiting for idle) wipes the user’s hard drive (or home directory). Of course the same bozo atomaton (l)users will run that program. Massive amounts of data will vanish at the speed of light.

Got backups?

(later) Oh, and get this: Bill Gates says virus attacks make Windows more secure! “A high volume system like [Windows] that has been thoroughly tested will be by far the most secure,” Now I’m really ROTFL. Or perhaps just COMOV. (No, you won’t find that one on the net, it’s one of my own, you’ll have to guess.)

In other news, Our Leader announces that we have always been at war with Australasia (or was that Oceania?).

Leave a Reply