Potential E-mail Security Problem

["Duncan/Rita Fletcher" <dfletche@gte.net>]

As a rule, viruses cannot be gotten by reading e-mail (as opposed to opening
attachments). The exception is when there is a bug in the program. Microsoft
has announced a security problem involving html e-mail with Internet
Explorer. See
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms01-020.asp for details
and a patch. Those that have installed IE 5.1 Service Pack 1 are not
affected. All other versions are potentially affected. There are no viruses,
etc. yet taking advantage of this, but then it was more than a year after MS
released the patch that plugged the hole allowing the kak worm before the
worm was unleashed. A rather sizable number of people on this list got that
because they had not installed that patch. Let's not repeat that.

Duncan Fletcher
dfletche@gte.net