Saturday, August 06, 2005

Last week's widely reported "Windows Vista virus" was not, in fact, a virus that targets Windows Vista at all, but was instead a virus that targets the Microsoft Scripting Host (MSH; codenamed Monad), an object-oriented, .NET-based command line environment. And while MSH may be installable in Windows Vista Beta 1, the environment does not come with Beta 1 and will not appear in future betas or the final release, Microsoft says. Furthermore, the new Windows Vista security subsystem isn't even enabled in Beta 1.

Thus, there's no Windows Vista virus. Sorry, conspiracy fans.

While I'm sure the gleeful Mac fanboy sites that ate up the "Vista virus" stories will be equally expedient in covering the truth, I have to wonder more about the mainstream media, which was equally ravenous about covering this story. Heck, even F-Secure, a widely-trusted security company, covered the alleged virus. There's no Windows Vista virus out there, folks. Anyone care to write about it?