Tea
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Ahh, thankyou Blakerwry. I'm aware of the skins for Moz, and they help a lot, but somehow it always seems to have a trace of that milled-from-the-solid-turd look that Netscape 6.0 introduced, skin or no skin. Just me, I guess.
Really, really stupid error messages of our time
- Thread starter Tea
- Start date
Tannin, i fail to see why should i change from Outlook when i have had no problems with it. i also fail to understand why that doesn't seem to make
sense to you
if other people let themselves get infected, that's their problem. i don't have any such problems. if it makes you feel better then i'm happy to say that if i were to have issues with virus infections through Outlook, well that would be different of course and i would choose to use another product.
sense to you
Tannin
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Fair enough, Jake. But I don't see why I should stop smoking. If other people get cancer, that's their problem. I am in perfect health. If I were to die of lung cancer, well that would be different of course and I would stop smoking immediately.
JSF
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Some of Outlook 2000’s functionality relies on installing Outlook Express. If Outlook is set up in IMO mode (Outlook is both a standalone Personal Information Manager and an e-mail client for Internet-based messaging) then Outlook saves contact information to the Outlook Address Book (OAB). The Windows Address Book (WAB) is the interface used to view or create entries in the Outlook Address Book. It is a collection of DLLs and an executable file installed as part of Outlook Express.
You should not uninstall Outlook Express if you want to retain Outlook.
Joe
You should not uninstall Outlook Express if you want to retain Outlook.
Joe
doesn't work mate 
my non-infectious use of Outlook does no damage to anyone else now does it?
my non-infectious use of Outlook does no damage to anyone else now does it?oops, my post above was in reply to Tannin's post.
JSF said:
I have currently uninstalled outlook express 6.0 and my outlook 2000 continues to function correctly including my address book. Is there something I'm missing? Only thing I can think of is that XP figured out a way to retain outlook's functionality, yet removed OE 6.0. That, or MS leaves the files in place for OE 6.0.
Tea
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Excuse Tannin please, people. He's a bit bloody-minded today. (Err... a bit more than usually bloody-minded, I mean. He's ordinarily bloody-minded every day.) So I guess it's up to me to try to respond to Handruin's question.
POP3 client, multiple accounts into one in-box: that's easy. But calender? I'm afraid I can't be any help at all there, as I have never, ever sucessfully used a calender/reminder do-dad in any form - not even a paper one. My working days are far too hectic and unpredictable to get any benefit from one. (Calender thingies are no use at all if they can't predict 70% of the day's events - and around 70% of my workload is stuff that comes up without warning. And that's a good day.) And my non-working time is far too precious to destroy by splitting it up into sections and assigning them in advance to something. That, for me, is the whole point of having a day off - there is nothing I have to do at any particular time. That's what a day off is: a day when you look out the window before you decide if you are going to rest up outside under a tree or just go back to bed. As for social events, such as remembering that we have concert tickets for Saturday - why? Isn't that what girlfriends and mothers are for?
POP3 client, multiple accounts into one in-box: that's easy. But calender? I'm afraid I can't be any help at all there, as I have never, ever sucessfully used a calender/reminder do-dad in any form - not even a paper one. My working days are far too hectic and unpredictable to get any benefit from one. (Calender thingies are no use at all if they can't predict 70% of the day's events - and around 70% of my workload is stuff that comes up without warning. And that's a good day.) And my non-working time is far too precious to destroy by splitting it up into sections and assigning them in advance to something. That, for me, is the whole point of having a day off - there is nothing I have to do at any particular time. That's what a day off is: a day when you look out the window before you decide if you are going to rest up outside under a tree or just go back to bed. As for social events, such as remembering that we have concert tickets for Saturday - why? Isn't that what girlfriends and mothers are for?
Tannin
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Ahh, but that's just the point, Jake. Outlook is infectious. Outlook users are far and away the Number One cause of other people getting infected. Look at the major virus problems of the last year or two: The Love Bug, Love Bug II, Melissa, Bugbear, a couple of others I forget. All of these were especially prone to infecting Outlook users, and most of them could only be passed on by people using Outlook and/or the Windows Address Book. Outlook is a danger to Outlook users (which, beinng a self-inflicted risk, is foolish but a choice people are entitled to make), but it is also not just a danger to all other users, it is the danger.
JSF
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Handruin, I am using Windows 2000 Professional. The information I posted was extracted from the O'Reilly book "Outlook 2000 In a Nutshell" by Tom Syroid & Bo Leuf.
I suspect that XP has removed the program dependency.
Joe.
I suspect that XP has removed the program dependency.
Joe.
Tannin said:
yes it's true what you say but how does relate to me if i don't get infected and don't pass on viruses to others? it doesn't! again no reason for me to change.
I read through the virus definition of bugbear, but I don't see how it affects outlook any different then any other e-mail cleint?
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.bugbear@mm.html
I see it affects only windows (no big surprise there), but outlook isn't mentioned as a root cause. Does this virus get executed just from downloading it somehow? Or, does the used have to run the application, that part I'm unclear on... It seems like the visurs can be spread through a LAN without any indication to users?
I read from here that MS has issued a security patch, so I wandered over to here.
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.bugbear@mm.html
I see it affects only windows (no big surprise there), but outlook isn't mentioned as a root cause. Does this virus get executed just from downloading it somehow? Or, does the used have to run the application, that part I'm unclear on... It seems like the visurs can be spread through a LAN without any indication to users?
I read from here that MS has issued a security patch, so I wandered over to here.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Actually, I'm fairly certain that I'm safest of all, since my mail reading is done primarily on an HP workstation running OpenBSD, with a client that doesn't even understand MIME or HTML, and Office document attachments are opened only on Linux machines.
I wouldn't load an AV package on my PCs if it made my computers faster. Those packages are, to a one, bug-ridden messes, and I won't even get into the practice of selling AV update "subscriptions".
I wouldn't load an AV package on my PCs if it made my computers faster. Those packages are, to a one, bug-ridden messes, and I won't even get into the practice of selling AV update "subscriptions".
Pradeep
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Bugbear is no different from many other viruses, people still have to be stupid enough to run the .scr, .exe, .pif etc. Though if they are running an elderly version of OE/Outlook, then the auto preview could infect them automagically.
Outlook 2002 by default will not let you open an executable file.
Can't your clients download and run the Bugbear removal tool from Symantec?
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.bugbear@mm.removal.tool.html
Today I had about 6 Klez and a couple of days ago two Bugbear emails.
Outlook 2002 by default will not let you open an executable file.
Can't your clients download and run the Bugbear removal tool from Symantec?
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.bugbear@mm.removal.tool.html
Today I had about 6 Klez and a couple of days ago two Bugbear emails.
Tannin
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Pradeep, the removal tool was only made available on Friday, by which time we had a long queue of machines waiting. Prior to that, no.
From Symantec's page:
"It retrieves the current user's email address and SMTP server from the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Account Manager\Accounts [This, of course, is the key that is placed there by, you guessed it, Outlook. If you have never installed and configured Outlook, it isn't there to give Bugbear the chance to spread.] It then uses its own SMTP engine to send itself to all email addresses that it finds. The worm also can construct addresses for the "From:" field using information that it harvests from the infected computer."
But we don't need to read past the circumlocutions on Symantec's home page, which is ever-so-careful not to offend their bum-buddies at M$, we can simply look at the in-the-wild distribution: Outlook users infected: lots. Non-Outlook users infected: Nil. And don't kid yourself that it's because everyone uses Outlook. I can't speak for other places, but the majority of our customers do not use Outlook, and only the dwindling moronic minority that do (maybe 40%) were infected.
This is not unique to Bugbear, of course. Most (possibly all) of the major virus outbreaks of recent years have been Outlook specific. Those that are not, usually attack one or other of the other M$ security jokes, such as the centralised address book, the scripting host, or their macro language. Bottom line is as simple as it is inescapable: Microsoft are utterly hopeless at security. Always have been. And despite some appalling vulnerabilities in other M$ products, Outlook remains the unchallenged champion of them all.
From Symantec's page:
"It retrieves the current user's email address and SMTP server from the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Account Manager\Accounts [This, of course, is the key that is placed there by, you guessed it, Outlook. If you have never installed and configured Outlook, it isn't there to give Bugbear the chance to spread.] It then uses its own SMTP engine to send itself to all email addresses that it finds. The worm also can construct addresses for the "From:" field using information that it harvests from the infected computer."
But we don't need to read past the circumlocutions on Symantec's home page, which is ever-so-careful not to offend their bum-buddies at M$, we can simply look at the in-the-wild distribution: Outlook users infected: lots. Non-Outlook users infected: Nil. And don't kid yourself that it's because everyone uses Outlook. I can't speak for other places, but the majority of our customers do not use Outlook, and only the dwindling moronic minority that do (maybe 40%) were infected.
This is not unique to Bugbear, of course. Most (possibly all) of the major virus outbreaks of recent years have been Outlook specific. Those that are not, usually attack one or other of the other M$ security jokes, such as the centralised address book, the scripting host, or their macro language. Bottom line is as simple as it is inescapable: Microsoft are utterly hopeless at security. Always have been. And despite some appalling vulnerabilities in other M$ products, Outlook remains the unchallenged champion of them all.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
I haven't visited this thread during the last few days, but it's a good thing I came back to take a glimpse. Like I wrote before, I didn't have any virii on my system for the last two or three years (at least, maybe more), so these nasty programs weren't much of a concern. I usually update my applications in the days following the newer versions or patches, I never open e-mail attachments unless they are from a known contact and are only un-virusable file types. I also only use Eudora for my POP3 e-mail account and Mozilla/Opera for my remote accounts. All in all, I'm the type of user who should be able to live without an AV program. However, I scan my system every now and then using trail versions of various AV program I grab here and there. Usually, I scan once every four months. Never had a damn bug on my machine...until today.Buck said:
Last time I scanned my system was with PC-Cillin 2002 (yep, updated too) about two months ago and it found nophing. Not sure, but I think Nimda existed two months ago. Well this afternoon, the updated 1.3.16 (I think) trial version of NOD32 found that my admin.dll was infected by NimdaA, another .dll by NimbaE and a bunch of attachments I never opened, but that still were somewhere on my hard drive, with Klez J. What the hell have I done to get infected by NimdaA & E? No idea. IIRC, Nimba is a dumb virus, something WE shouldn't be affected by. More important, most of the Klez J infected attachments were on my system last time I ran PC-Cillin 2002 (a .pif, a .bat, a very old .scr, etc). So why didn't it told me about it? Does PC-Cillin knows that I never open attachments so it figures out that I won't be infected no matter if the files are on my hard drive or not...or is it simply too blind to find them?
Anyway, this is my first infection in a while. I knew something was wrong with my system (but maybe it isn't caused by Nimba) because I now have a hard time to install several programs (like Acrobat Reader 5.05, but that's pretty normal isn't it?). I'm still not sure I'm ready to spend 40U$ for a protection against a flea that only affected me after several years of peace, but I'm very happy to have used it at least once to get rid of the junk I had. I encouraged others to try NOD32. I've used NAV, McAffee, PC-Cillin, AVG and a few others in the past, but none have found the bugs NOD32 did find, not to mention that it isn't as obtrusive as any Symantec programs. I'm a satisfied one-time user.
Thanks Buck.
time
0
Although I agree in principle with Tannin, I'm don't think that Bugbear is limited to Outlook users. It's just that Outlook makes it so much easier to open the attachment, preview or not. Don't forget that Bugbear uses double extensions, and even changes the mime content label to confuse the user as to the type of attachment.
For those who aren't aware of the fact, Bugbear is a very sophisticated worm virus. All the A/V vendors have something to say about it, but (to my surprise) Symantec has published the most indepth analysis:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.bugbear@mm.html
Mandatory reading for everyone here. :excl:
However, Symantec's disinfection instructions are hopelessly convoluted. You're better off reading the advisories from Sophos or Eset. All three vendors have published standalone disinfection utilities.
Coug, Nod32 is an impressive piece of software. It's obvious that the developers are in a different league to Symantec's (although that's not a very high bar). What does surprise me is that Symantec has improved so much in the last 12 months or so, in detection rates anyway.
For those who aren't aware of the fact, Bugbear is a very sophisticated worm virus. All the A/V vendors have something to say about it, but (to my surprise) Symantec has published the most indepth analysis:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.bugbear@mm.html
Mandatory reading for everyone here. :excl:
However, Symantec's disinfection instructions are hopelessly convoluted. You're better off reading the advisories from Sophos or Eset. All three vendors have published standalone disinfection utilities.
Coug, Nod32 is an impressive piece of software. It's obvious that the developers are in a different league to Symantec's (although that's not a very high bar). What does surprise me is that Symantec has improved so much in the last 12 months or so, in detection rates anyway.
Buck
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You're welcome Coug. I'm always happy to pass on helpful information.
Tannin
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Ask and ye shall receive, Doug. How about this? From The Inquirer today:
[The writer] interviews Mitch Kapor. You know... the guy who built Lotus and popularized spreadsheets with Lotus 1-2-3 back when it ran on MS-DOS... and practically invented groupware with a little product called Notes. The guy who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation. That guy.
What Mitch Kapor is working on developing now is an Open Source project to build what he calls "Interpersonal Information Manager" software.
The application, or more properly, an interoperating suite of several applications "...is being designed to securely handle personal e- mail, calendars, contacts and other such data in new ways, and to make it simple to collaborate and share information with others without having to run powerful, expensive server computers..." according to Gillmor.
The few key words there are "securely" and "without... expensive server computers." This sounds like real, secure Peer-to-Peer groupware, and -- as Gillmor observes -- it is potentially a big deal. Think of having a good and inexpensive alternative to Microsoft's bloated, insecure, and costly Outlook and Exchange products and attendant infrastructure. Then realize that Microsoft's email and calendaring software have many firms and organizations locked into Microsoft's software upgrade extortion.
Apparently Mitch Kapor and his colleagues in this endeavor are not in it for the money. Kapor himself doesn't need money (he sold Lotus to IBM a while back). And his coworkers seem to be motivated by interest in good work for its own sake, building something to be proud of, not a prospect of great financial gain. The development organization is non-profit.
Microsoft might be in trouble: Mitch Kapor is out having fun again.
[The writer] interviews Mitch Kapor. You know... the guy who built Lotus and popularized spreadsheets with Lotus 1-2-3 back when it ran on MS-DOS... and practically invented groupware with a little product called Notes. The guy who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation. That guy.
What Mitch Kapor is working on developing now is an Open Source project to build what he calls "Interpersonal Information Manager" software.
The application, or more properly, an interoperating suite of several applications "...is being designed to securely handle personal e- mail, calendars, contacts and other such data in new ways, and to make it simple to collaborate and share information with others without having to run powerful, expensive server computers..." according to Gillmor.
The few key words there are "securely" and "without... expensive server computers." This sounds like real, secure Peer-to-Peer groupware, and -- as Gillmor observes -- it is potentially a big deal. Think of having a good and inexpensive alternative to Microsoft's bloated, insecure, and costly Outlook and Exchange products and attendant infrastructure. Then realize that Microsoft's email and calendaring software have many firms and organizations locked into Microsoft's software upgrade extortion.
Apparently Mitch Kapor and his colleagues in this endeavor are not in it for the money. Kapor himself doesn't need money (he sold Lotus to IBM a while back). And his coworkers seem to be motivated by interest in good work for its own sake, building something to be proud of, not a prospect of great financial gain. The development organization is non-profit.
Microsoft might be in trouble: Mitch Kapor is out having fun again.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
I say no chance. Bill will try to buy out Kapor and if he fails, he'll hire the Washington's sniper to eliminate him. Billl is the Devil, never foget it.