MACROs are back? (what is this 1990's)

Just this morning while I was checking out Dvorak's Blog I saw a post about an Open office virus,
and the article goes like this (taken from Cnet news ):

Stardust virus lands on OpenOffice

By Joris Evers                                

Staff Writer, CNET News.com
                               

 

Published: May 31, 2006, 10:30 AM PDT

Researchers at Kaspersky Lab have spotted what they believe is the first virus for OpenOffice, the open-source rival to Microsoft's Office productivity suite.

The virus, dubbed Stardust, is capable of infecting OpenOffice and StarOffice, which is sold by Sun Microsystems, a Kaspersky Lab researcher wrote on the Russian company's Viruslist Web site on Tuesday.

"Stardust is a macro virus written for StarOffice, the first one I've seen," the researcher wrote. "Macro viruses usually infect MS Office applications."

The pest is written in Star Basic. It downloads an image file with adult content from the Internet and opens that file in a new document, according to Kaspersky's posting.

So far, Stardust is a proof-of-concept virus, which means that it was created to demonstrate that an OpenOffice virus is possible. The virus has not been sent out in the wild and is not actually attacking people's systems.

The story is different for Microsoft Office applications: A yet-to-be-patched security hole in Word has been exploited in at least one recent cyberattack.

A new "macro virus" is like a blast from the past. Viruses have evolved significantly. Boot sector pests were around between 1986 to 1995, followed by macro viruses that exploited early Microsoft Windows operating systems, according to security company F-Secure. The advent of e-mail subsequently propelled e-mail viruses such as the "I Love You" and the Anna Kournikova virus.

--END--

Well, what do i have to say? I'd say Opensource Programs like Open-office and Firefox are not really more secure than Microsoft's programs are, the truth is that Open-source programs maybe as vulnerable as Bill's merchandise are, the only diff is that Bill's products are more in demand than it's open-source counterparts.

Now, about the virus. I while i was reading the whole article I felt like I was reading an article that was written in the early 1990's, Man! macro viruses are way out of circulation now. I can write a Macro virus in minutes even a pre-school can make one ( okay, maybe some geeky elementary student...)

But I do have a theory that one of Bill's fan did that virus.