Re: OT: M$ Outlook Virus
> while it is tru you can remove most scriptin support with removin the
> microsoft scripting host, what if you're a developer ? Or you're environment
> requires you to be able to run scripts ?
Then you have a handful of choices.
1. Run a virus scanner, and make sure you update it EVERY DAY (even if you know that the frequency of updates is slower than that).
2. Have your development machine be an isolated system. Don't connect it to any network, or make sure that the network it's on is a
standalone network (not connected to any other networks). This isolates it, and means that any files you bring over have to be on
disk - which are much easier to scan for viruses than trying to scan all network traffic. (It also has the side-effect of not being
able to spread a virus very far should the network be infected somehow.)
3. Use an email program that does not support scripting. Frankly, there's very little reason for scripting to be in an email
program, and whatever bonuses scripting-in-email-apps has are heavily outweighed by the possibility for abuse. Find yourself a nice
email app that doesn't support VBS or Javascript (Eudora, I believe, doesn't support the scripting, but I'm sure you can find others
as well).
4. Turn off Explorer's hiding of three-letter file extensions. A file named "AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs" is a big tip-off that something
isn't right. There are, supposedly, viruses that can be loaded even if you preview the message, but for the most part just seeing
the attachment filename is enough for you to know that the file shouldn't be double-clicked.
5. Set up a quarantine. Not having used Outlook much, I can't say exactly how to do this, but I'm sure it's possible to set up a
quarantine so that any email containing attachments (or specific attachments, such as *.vbs) gets put into a separate folder from
"Inbox." While this doesn't technically prevent you from getting exposed, it at least puts you on notice that the quarantined files
/may/ contain viruses, and so you're less likely to start double-clicking at random.
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