Unless you’ve been trapped underground for the last week, you’ve probably heard all the hoopla about the Love Bug, the latest in a string of e-mail worms that take advantage of security holes in Microsoft programs (security holes that I have discussed several times before).

The Love Bug, as it was nicknamed by oh-so-creative headline writers around the country, ran rampant last Friday (read the story here), infecting millions of computers worldwide. The worm is much like the Melissa worm that ran around in March of 1999, in that it took advantage of security holes in Microsoft’s Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail clients.
But there is something that made this one much worse that the Melissa virus. Both viruses worked by opening the address book of the e-mail program, and then sending the virus on to addresses it finds. Melissa had a limit of 50 address, while Love Bug has a limit of 200. Not only that, but it goes beyond worm and earns virus classification (click here for the difference between and worm and a virus). It not only will replicate the virus to the first 200 addresses it finds, but it will overwrite graphic files (*.jpg, specifically) and MP3s that you might have stored on your computer. The fact alone caused havoc for companies that rely on graphics to do business. According to Time magazine, a German newspaper lost 2,000 photographs from its online archives. Rumor has is that the Multiple Listing Service branch in Portland (a service that real estate agents use to grab pictures of homes that are for sale) lost a few thousand too.
I think the thing that makes this annoying, though, is that Microsoft doesn’t seem to think that there is a problem, even though the hole is in their product.
The code that went into writing the Love Bug is code that any programmer with some time on their hands could create. The program uses a scripting language called VBScript (read my column about VBScript here). It’s a scripting language that, if used properly, can do cool things with Windows. But the way it was created, it leaves ties to the operating system that any programmer worth his or her salt could exploit in no time at all. Microsoft already has a ton to deal with because of its anti-trust lawsuit. But what sickens me is that it’s using this virus as leverage in its case.
The Associated Press reported that Microsoft co-founder and chief geek Bill Gates is claiming that future viruses would be harder to protect against if the company is split in two. Mr. Bill also says in a Time Magazine article that one of the proposed Department of Justice punishments, one that would effectively impose a ban of up to 10 years on the addition of significant Windows features, would “kill innovation in the OS” and limit “updates to Windows and Office that could … protect against attacks such as the Love Bug virus.”
But the thing is, their “innovation” is what caused this in the first place. Anybody who know Microsoft know that they are not innovators (read my previous column and post feedback below if you think I’m wrong). They bought most of the technology they own or copied it from someone else (read: UNIX) that has already done it better. Mr. Bill claims that their planned “tablet PC” is one of the greatest innovations to come out of Redmond. The device will allow you to take notes on a small, portable device and have it seamlessly transfer to your PC.
Nice “innovation,” Bill, considering that Cross, the company famous for its pens, does the same thing, and it was invented a couple of years ago.
Microsoft’s “innovations” have got us in trouble already. I really want to the government to break up Microsoft. Let somebody else create something useful to run on Windows because these “innovations” are going to make my computer explode.