Word: bug
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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DOOMSDAY PREDICTION Y2K, the millennium bug, would cause financial chaos or nuclear holocaust...
...pencils down. Score one point if you said they're all horrible little computer viruses. Score two if you guessed they were the Top 10 digital infections of 1999. And award a dozen bonus points if you worked out the most important and terrifying connection: like the Love Bug, every last one e-mailed its way into our PCs using Microsoft software as a carrier...
...Using Word, Excel and Outlook exclusively on Windows machines in a company network "is like planting Kansas with the same grain of wheat," says Bill Cheswick, a senior researcher at Lucent. When a virus preys on the crop, nothing is left standing. The companies hit hardest by the Love Bug were closed Microsoft shops. Users who had planted their PCs with a slightly more colorful selection of seeds--even just substituting Eudora for Outlook--suffered...
Microsoft resists the monoculture argument as strongly as it does the DOJ breakup plan. "The reason [Love Bug] spread so rapidly is more a matter of the connectedness of systems than the specifics of platforms," insists Steve Lipner, manager of Microsoft's security-response center. Still, the company recognizes the threat from at least one source of infections. The latest version of Word profits from its predecessor's mistakes and comes with macros disabled by default, meaning that viruses like Ethan, Marker and even Melissa will find it harder to gain a toehold. But Outlook's macros...
...kill innovation in the OS--and impair the livelihoods of the tens of thousands of independent software developers who depend on constant innovation in the OS to make their products more attractive. Updates to Windows and Office technologies that could, for example, protect against attacks such as the Love Bug virus would also be much harder for computer users to obtain...