[NCLUG] virus de-alert

[thorson at aster.com]

FOOT-AND-MOUTH BELIEVED TO BE FIRST VIRUS
UNABLE TO SPREAD THROUGH MICROSOFT OUTLOOK

Researchers Shocked to Finally Find Virus That Email App Doesn't Like

Atlanta, Ga. (SatireWire.com) - Scientists at the Centers for Disease
Control and Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center today confirmed that
foot-and-mouth disease cannot be spread by Microsoft's Outlook email
application, believed to be the first time the program has ever failed
to propagate a major virus.

"Frankly, we've never heard of a virus that couldn't spread through
Microsoft Outlook, so our findings were, to say the least, unexpected,"
said Clive Sarnow, director of the CDC's infectious disease unit.

The study was immediately hailed by British officials, who said it will
save millions of pounds and thousands of man hours. "Up until now we
have, quite naturally, assumed that both foot-and-mouth and mad cow were
spread by Microsoft Outlook," said Nick Brown, Britain's Agriculture
Minister. "By eliminating it, we can focus our resources elsewhere."

However, researchers in the Netherlands, where foot-and-mouth has
recently appeared, said they are not yet prepared to disqualify Outlook,
which has been the progenitor of viruses such as "I Love You,"
"Bubbleboy," "Anna Kournikova," and "Naked Wife," to name but a few.

Said Nils Overmars, director of the Molecular Virology Lab at Leiden
University: "It's not that we don't trust the research, it's just that
as scientists, we are trained to be skeptical of any finding that flies in
the face of established truth. And this one flies in the face like a
blind drunk sparrow."

Executives at Microsoft, meanwhile, were equally skeptical, insisting
that Outlook's patented Virus Transfer Protocol (VTP) has proven virtually
pervious to any virus. The company, however, will issue a free VTP patch
if it turns out the application is not vulnerable to foot-and-mouth.

Such an admission would be embarrassing for the software giant, but
Symantec virologist Ariel Kologne insisted that no one is more
humiliated by the study than she is. "Only last week, I had a reporter ask
if the foot-and-mouth virus spreads through Microsoft Outlook, and I told
him, 'Doesn't everything?'" she recalled. "Who would've thought?"

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