From: "Rod Gasson" 


"Bob Lawrence" 
wrote in message
news:1080815993{at}p12.f610.n712.z3.ftn...
> RG> The point I was trying to make is that cookies are NOT
> RG> executable files
>
> JB> a point well made.
>
>    And the point *I* was trying to make was that cookies come
> unsolicited, are stored god-knows-where, and could easily have an EXE
> lurking in amongst the dross, just waiting to infect.

WRONG.
They are alwayts stored in the SAME place (as defined by the browers - NOT
the server)
Even if they DID have an exe somehow hidden in them, you'd need to first
locate the cookie folder, then the coookie, then you'd need to extract the
.exe from the cookie, and finally you'd have to execute the virul code to
become infected.
Not exactly something that you could do accidently, and it certainly isn't
anything that could magically execute itself.

PLEASE do us all a favour (especially yourself) and have a crash course in
cookies.

> RG> As I keep saying, viruses don't 'just happen' - it takes user
> RG> input of one sort or another in order for them to spread.
>
> JB> In general yeah, Microsoft juste relased another patch in
> JB> attempt to make that true,

The patch is/was only *required* by those people that had manually reduced
their securities settings with then enabled to exploit to take place (it was
a recommended update to all others).  The point I'd like to make here is
that any person that is willing to mess with the default security settings
should also take it upon themselves to keep up to date with the various
patches.

>  Unfortunately, it goes against the Microsoft philosophy of making a
> computer easy to use. It's *supposed* to be a no-brainer... and Gates
> is right! Using a computer *ought* to be a no-brainer, so while M$ is
> making everything easy and automatic, Rod complains that we ought to
> know what's happening and take care.

Rod complains about idiots that blindly double-click (or allow to run) any
programs or files of any type that has been recieved unsolicited, and them
try to blame Microsoft (Or Linux, or Unix) because their OS allowed them to
get infected.

> JB> It seems there was some way to get OE to run stuff wiothout
> JB> asking and there was no way to block it.

This was the very old bug in ONE particular version of OE that I'd
previously mentioned. That bug was fixed VERY quickly. All of the later
(similar) exploits were only effective against those that had reduced their
security settings enough to allow the expolit(s) to take place.

One of the latest viruses now doing the rounds (quite succefully) is
actually taking advantage of a bug that was fixed well over 3 years ago!!!
and all this tells me is that there really are a lot of idiots out there
that foolishly think they can access the net with no protection, no updates,
and still be immune.
Sadly, you seem to be one of these 'idiots' with one important exception -
You KNOW you are an idiot and that you are likely to be infected by going
online and doing all the wrong things, so you've opted to keep your own
machine offline, so I guess that makes you a clever idiot :-

Cheers
Rod


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