Friday, January 4, 2002

Bogus dates for McAfee virus alerts http://www.mcafeeb2b.com/avert/virus-alerts/default.asp When I go to McAfee virus alerts Web page I read the somewhat disconcerting line "This page current as of" (and it ends, without even a period). What am I to assume about the currentness of the page? Turning on javascript gives me a slightly different answer that reads "This page current as of Monday, January 4th, 1971." So now I know that as of early January 1971 there are NO virus alerts for any 1980's era DOS boxes and 1990's/2000's era Windows boxes. That sure makes me feel a whole lot better. Not only are there no virus alerts, but the machines those alerts would be for haven't even been invented yet! Oh wait, the clock on my machine is just wrong, and the Web page merely printed out the local concept of the day and year. How much can I trust the page now? The concept of "current" is local to me, the reader, via javascript. I don't need to go out onto the Internet to download a current copy of the page from the McAfee Web site to get an "up to date" version, I just have to reload my locally cached copy and presto it has todays date on it, and I will never again have to worry about viruses alerts because there won't be any. The risk here is that someone could look at this Web page and see an invalid date because either their machine has the wrong time or because the Web page was cached somewhere and not re-downloaded. The result would be that someone might not find out about an important (high risk) virus that could potentially do a lot of damage. PS: I complained about this to McAfee using their online form about a month ago, and never heard anything back. ["Schlake ( William Colburn )" via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 85] 0:00 # G!

ING bank debits wrong sum from accounts About 51,000 customers who withdrew money from their ING Bank account on 1 & 2 Jan 2002 (through an ATM) have had the wrong amount debited from their account. The bank hasn't yet given an explanation for the error other than to suspect that it was related to the high stress their systems were under during the first few days of the new year. The amounts debited from customer accounts was a hundred times what they withdrew from the ATMs. This got some people into trouble when their balance went negative and they could no longer use their bank PIN card to pay with in shops. ING Bank corrected the error yesterday. On a related note, my wife withdrew Euros from an ATM yesterday and the printed receipt came up blank. My guess is that the ink ribbon on the embedded matrix printer ran out. Bank personnel are working like crazy to feed the machines with Euro bills and simply forget to check the printer. If her bank makes a mistake similar to the one ING made, she would have a hard time proving that she didn't withdraw 10000 Euro. [Paul van Keep via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 84] 0:00 # G!