Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on June 25, 2003 03:17 AM
A little harsh on your relatives?
Don't forget to mention pif, vbs, cpl, wsf, vb, js et al. Also those jpegs, gifs might have a double (hidden) extension, that outlook doesn't show, and some virus blockers don't catch by default. And some virii will run automatically.
You should be able to see them if you download the latest service packs, office patch and IE, say 150 MB over your 56k dialup line (that delivers 24k due to old copper and the telcos DACS splitter).
An average user will not subscribe to virus bullitins, or have a fast internet link.
Rather than educating SOHO users, microsoft chose the administrator as default user, and as a consequence all programs inherit this privilege.
They at least could have insisted that all program installs / plugins be carried out through the Add/Remove section in control panel, like MS Terminal services, and restrict access to docs/ system files to these programs. All other code would have the execute flag turned off. The added level of indirection might allow you to give a simple coherent list of DO NOT's to your relative.
Of course you really would like external input to be sandboxed, in its own little vmware type box, to guard against programmer mistakes and to teach the user (and windows programmers) about permission levels but that isn't common in the unix world either yet.
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Re:Blaming Outlook
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on June 25, 2003 03:17 AMDon't forget to mention pif, vbs, cpl, wsf, vb, js et al.
Also those jpegs, gifs might have a double (hidden) extension, that outlook doesn't show, and some virus blockers don't catch by default. And some virii will run automatically.
You should be able to see them if you download the latest service packs, office patch and IE, say 150 MB over your 56k dialup line (that delivers 24k due to old copper and the telcos DACS splitter).
An average user will not subscribe to virus bullitins, or have a fast internet link.
Rather than educating SOHO users, microsoft chose the administrator as default user, and as a consequence all programs inherit this privilege.
They at least could have insisted that all program installs / plugins be carried out through the Add/Remove section in control panel, like MS Terminal services, and restrict access to docs/ system files to these programs.
All other code would have the execute flag turned off.
The added level of indirection might allow you to give a simple coherent list of DO NOT's to your relative.
Of course you really would like external input to be sandboxed, in its own little vmware type box, to guard against programmer mistakes and to teach the user (and windows programmers) about permission levels but that isn't common in the unix world either yet.
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