UPDATED at 10:36 am. – I just found the link to the BBC’s Real Audio of this program (World Today News Europe, January 30th 2004, about the 6-minute mark of the program), so I’ve updated Sundwall’s quotes for accuracy… tH.

[Editor’s note: Stumax.com is proud to welcome guest author The Hammer as a regular contributor to the site.]

I was driving home from Cinerama tonight, where I finally saw the Return of the King. The Hammer doesn’t usually wax poetic, but aside from the fact that all the guys in the movie looked like they were constantly about one frame of film away from tounging each other with naked homosexual affection, the LoTR trilogy is about as good as moviemaking gets. So my head was spinning a little bit when I switched on KUOW to listen to BBC World Service.

One of the segments sported an interview with Microsoft shillperson Sean Sundwall. Seems MS is a little pissed off now that someone’s gone and pointed MyDoomB at Big Brother’s own servers. In response, our favorite local employer has offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the b-variant’s author.

The virus is distributed as an email attachment – usually from an infected computer which sends the email to addresses it finds on the host’s computer system. The virus opens backdoors which could allow a hacker access to the infected computer. The virus also blocks access to popular anti-virus sites.

After spouting the company line about why Microsoft decided it had to dangle a reward out there for any finks or stool pigeons who think money’s more important than friendship (or at least professional courtesy), Sundwall was asked whether the latest virus illustrates the vulnerability of Microsoft systems.

Normal person woulda said, “Yes, regrettably, and it’s something we’re working very hard on.” Or something like that. Right?

Not our boy Sunny.

Get this: Sundwall says^1^ that “this vulnerability is actually independent of Microsoft software or any vulnerabiities that might be in our software.” Instead of showing any problems with the MS OS, the virus “simply relies upon social engineering tricks to get people to do something that otherwise they would not normally do, which is to open an attachment from someone that they don’t know.”

Brilliant! Oh, my God! That’s just f-ing brilliant! So MyDoom – a virus which according to Symantec’s website does not affect DOS, Linux, Macintosh, OS/2 or Unix – this virus apparently has nothing at all to do with the Windows OS. No, there’s no problem with your operating system, people. No, instead the virus writers are socially engineering the computer-using public to do something completely contrary to what we would usually do; namely to share information over the freakin’ internet.

But, I hear you saying, opening an attachment from somebody you don’t know is stupid and you really shouldn’t be doing that anyway. Well, sure, that’s stupid behavior if you buy into the argument that any program ought to be allowed to change your system files without your permission. (Sure, the benefits of that are obvious.) But, listen to what Sundwall says next. Mind you, this is in the same breath, just – I mean immediately after he said that users are opening attachments from people they don’t know:

“This particular virus is extremely tricky in what it purports to be. In many cases it purports to be an undelivered message, so sometimes it will come back as a postmaster; so even a savvy user would double-click on that because they would expect it to be the message that they sent, when indeed it’s not.”

Brilliant. I wish this had been on BBC TV instead of radio so we could actually see this guy talking out of his ass! Play the audio yourself and imagine Sundwall as Ace Ventura, bent over and making with the butt puppet as he spouts this putrescence.

No, there’s no problems with Microsoft’s products. It’s social engineering, that’s your culprit.

I, for one, sure hope they catch this little virus-writing bastard. Anyone clever enough to perpetrate social engineering on that scale is a dangerous f-er. Why, next thing you know, he’ll turn his criminal mind to making us drive our cars to work or, eat our breakfasts, or… buy Windows XP! He’s mad with power, I tells ya!

God forbid Microsoft should have to take the blame for producing a lousy product. Within an hour of hearing that interview, I read on Slashdot where the FBI is all on Macs because they’re – and I’m quoting an FBI security expert on this – the Macs are “secure out of the box!”

What’s more, I also picked up the Seattle Weekly tonight. The cover article is all about spam, and the author quotes one expert who asserts that up to 75% of all spam could be coming from virus-infected machines and another who claims that if you connect a PC to the internet without a firewall, you’re likely to be infected within five minutes!

Get with it, Microsoft. Your users are using your software in good faith. You’ve been socially engineering them for years to believe in the promise of interconnected computing, and that means you’ve been the ones training them to open attachments that they get in their email.

Just a little double-click, man. Everybody’s doing it. The first one’s always free.

Step up to the plate, Bill Gates. Tell your lackeys that Microsoft is big enough to take its lumps like a man. Then fix your g-d product so that it works like every other mature operating system.

(And, by the way, if you really had any integrity about catching the virus writers, you might have ponied up the reward money when it was your scum-sucking SCO buddies that were in trouble, instead of waiting until somebody pointed a bunch of virus-loaded PCs back in your faces.)

I’m Audi 5000, y’all. The Hammer has spoken!

¹ Don’t just take my word for it that this is what Sundwall said; go to the http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/index.shtml yourself and listen to the World News report that ran on January 29th.

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