RT> What is the effect of the following virus on OS/2? 
 RT> [...]
 RT> I-Worm.PrettyPark
 RT>
 RT> Wonder how long it will take Micro-Sloth to fix Outlook and Outlook
 RT> Express so that their address books are secure?

It's not the address books that are the problem.  It's the whole design.

The category of viruses that propagate as attachments to mail messages will
have no effect on OS/2 Warp *whatsoever*.  

Windows clients may write the virus files to OS/2 machines used as LAN file
servers, and may attempt to destroy files residing on those servers, but
that's simply because the OS/2 file server (*any* file server) cannot
distinguish between file I/O operations that are the result of a virus program 
running from those that are the result of anything else.  OS/2 file servers
will not run the viruses themselves, and will not actively participate in
their propagation in any way.

The reason for this is simple.  Consider how such viruses operate.  They rely
on the fact that Microsoft's Office and Outlook products were designed to have 
macro facilities that operated in such a way that a document could cause the
automatic execution of a macro simply by its being loaded.  With the
integration of Microsoft's mail user agent and Microsoft's word-processor,
this leaves a huge gaping hole in security such that a mail message may have
embedded document content, and such content can include executable macros that 
the word-processor can be made to execute.  So what the viruses do is twofold. 
 They contain a macro, and an executable Win32 program sent as an attachment
that the macro causes to be run as if it were a normal program being run.

On OS/2 one isn't using Microsoft Outlook (or Outlook Express) to read mail in 
the first place, and so doesn't have the problem of Outlook "intelligently"
automatically handing mail messages in Word or HTML format over to the
word-processor or the web browser.  This is the first reason that OS/2 will be 
unaffected by this entire category of viruses.  Even if an OS/2 were to
receive a mail message containing such a virus, it won't be run by the mail
program.

Also, on OS/2 one cannot run the attached Win32 program that the macro would
try to execute.  It simply won't run at all, since it is a 32-bit Windows
program, not a 32-bit OS/2 program.  And it is the Win32 program that is
usually the propagating and infecting agent, with the main viral payload. 
This is the second reason that OS/2 will be completely unaffected by this
entire category of viruses.

It is interesting to note that many virus analysts now state (with varying
degrees of authority) that mail message viruses are now the most common form
of viruses, and are the main cause of updates to anti-virus packages.  If this 
is true, OS/2 users are sitting pretty.  Not only are there *no* OS/2 viruses
in the wild (and for various reasons OS/2 viruses are difficult to write), but 
OS/2 is immune from the now most popular form of virus found in the wild
because of IBM's decision not to support Win32.

 ¯ JdeBP ®

--- FleetStreet 1.22 NR
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