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Date sent: Sun, 08 Apr 2001 07:23:16 -0600
From: aergo <aergo_at_earthlink.net>
Subject: O.T. - Virus: FOOT-AND-MOUTH
Have a good week, everyone ! A. ;-)
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Subject: Virus: FOOT-AND-MOUTH
======================================
FOOT-AND-MOUTH BELIEVED TO BE FIRST VIRUS
UNABLE TO SPREAD THROUGH MICROSOFT OUTLOOK
Researchers Shocked to Finally Find Virus That Email
App Doesn't Like
Atlanta, Ga. - Scientists at the Centers for Disease
Control and
Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center today confirmed
that foot-and-mouth
disease cannot be spread by Microsoft's Outlook email
application,
believed to be the first time the program has ever
failed to propagate a
major virus. "Frankly, we've never heard of a virus
that couldn't spread
through Microsoft Outlook, so our findings were, to say
the least,
unexpected," said Clive Sarnow, director of the CDC's
infectious disease
unit.
The study was immediately hailed by British officials,
who said it will
save millions of pounds and thousands of man hours. "Up
until now we have,
quite naturally, assumed that both foot-and-mouth and
mad cow were spread
by Microsoft Outlook," said Nick Brown, Britain's
Agriculture Minister.
"By eliminating it, we can focus our resources
elsewhere."
However, researchers in the Netherlands, where
foot-and-mouth has recently
appeared, said they are not yet prepared to disqualify
Outlook, which has
been the progenitor of viruses such as "I Love You,"
"Bubbleboy," "Anna
Kournikova," and "Naked Wife," to name but a few. Said
Nils Overmars,
director of the Molecular Virology Lab at Leiden
University: "It's not
that we don't trust the research, it's just that as
scientists, we are
trained to be skeptical of any finding that flies in
the face of
established truth. And this one flies in the face like
a blind drunk
sparrow."
Executives at Microsoft, meanwhile, were equally
skeptical, insisting that
Outlook's patented Virus Transfer Protocol (VTP) has
proven virtually
pervious to any virus. The company, however, will issue
a free VTP patch
if it turns out the application is not vulnerable to
foot-and-mouth. Such
an admission would be embarrassing for the software
giant, but Symantec
virologist Ariel Kologne insisted that no one is more
humiliated by the
study than she is.
"Only last week, I had a reporter ask if the
foot-and-mouth virus spreads
through Microsoft Outlook, and I told him, "'Doesn't
everything?'" she
recalled. "Who would've thought?"
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lgwalker_at_look.ca
Received on Mon Apr 09 2001 - 04:45:48 BST