Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Thomas A. Beckett" <thomas AT tbeckett.com>]

        I note today yet another Microsoft Outlook virus: 
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/05/27/new.virus.resume/index.html

        And the other day, while perusing Steven Champeon's JaundicedEye site,
I read his somewhat mossy essay on the potential for the "subscribe"
function of Internet Explorer (ver. 4.0, that's what I mean by mossy) to
be used in a conspiratorial fashion to mount a DoS campaign. 
http://a.jaundicedeye.com/dark_fiber/article.html  (It appears that this
was actually written by Greg DeKoenigsberg and not Mr. Champeon
himself.)  

        Putting 2 & 2 together and getting 5, I wonder if a Melissa or Love 
Bug
style virus could be created which would do the following things:  

-  When opened, start a VB script which would *slowly* mail itself to
everyone in the victim's Outlook address book.  Slowly so as to not
overwhelm mail servers and make itself known.  

-  After accomplishing the foregoing, and perhaps after an additional
time delay, "subscribe" the victim's Internet Explorer to a given Web
site.  Let's continue to use Steven's example of www.microsoft.com.  Set
the refresh rate for the subscription to once per minute.  

-  Do nothing further to the victim's computer.  

        This would accomplish the delicious irony of Microsoft's entire
installed base of Windows and Office engaging in a distributed denial of
service attack on Microsoft's own Web site.  My question is just, is
this still possible in the current version of IE and with the
"antivirus" patches recently promulgated by Microsoft?  

TaB