Outlook security updates not stopping Swen

["Guy Barnum" <GuyBarnum@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(posted to dshield also)
For all of you who have been flooded with Swen emails.  I've gone around a few 
times over the last few days with a combination of ISA server, outlook and 
Norton not being able to stop the latest Microsoft-hoax swen virus email.  Here 
is what I came up with:

I just tested a win 98 system and a win XP Pro system after installing the 
latest office service pack and security updates.  

On the win98 system Outlook would still trigger the swen .exe attachment from 
just the email preview and doesn't filter any dangerous file extension 
attachments as its supposed to.

Installing the same service packs and security patches on the xp pro machine, 
running the same version of office, fixed the problem.  The default dangerous 
file extension attachments are stripped out of the email.

On the win98 system I had to go in to the registry and add the Level1Add string 
value (along with a few preceding registry keys) and manually add all of the 
extensions I want to be filtered.  This looks like it took care of the problem 
as I've sent myself a few .exe and .com files that have been stripped out.

See article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;312834

To see the recommended list of file extensions to block if you also need to add 
these by hand see article: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=290497

and scroll down to "Attachment Behavior".

It strikes me as surreal that Microsoft releases a security update to fix a 
bug, which security update itself has a bug and another update web page on how 
to manually fix it.  Couldn't they go back and re-release a working version of 
their original security update?!

Guy
gbarnum@xxxxxxxxxxxx