You Don't Want This Windows Update
link: original article - section: microsoft
Today, I got an e-mail warning of a new Windows virus and where to get the update to protect against it. Oh, those wicked phishers.
I was immediately suspicious of the e-mail. What surprised me: how much useful information Outlook 2007 offered and how little Windows Live Mail offered.
Some quick background: I had been using Windows Live Mail full-time, but switched to Outlook on Saturday. Five weeks was enough for me. The newer Live Mail version is just as clunky as the old one. It's finicky and bothersome. Not that I like Outlook much better. I still resent that the program killed nearly all competition for e-mail, contact and calendaring. There's some revival, because of cell phones and Web services from companies like Google. But nowhere near enough.
Griping aside, I'm finding Outlook on Windows 7 provides an almost acceptable user experience. The software runs faster and doesn't hog all the system resources, as it has in my testing on Windows XP and Vista. Today's phishing e-mail gave me a reason to actually appreciate Outlook
Both e-mail programs put the message in Junk Mail and blocked images. Even the images could be dangerous in a message like this one, if for nothing more than acting as a Web beacon validating the e-mail address. But Outlook did more, by showing the URL to the images and behind the link text. The link leads to an executable and, whoa, that ain't no Microsoft Web address.
According to Sophos, ldr.exe is a Trojan that changes the registry to load the executable on start-up.
