By Sarah Left, 29 April 1999 17:58
NEWS A California university student has posted online information about a Java bug that crashes PCs running Windows 95 and 98. The applet can be embedded in Internet sites, and is activated when unsuspecting surfers click on an infected Web page. The applet creates so many demands on a PC's processing power that it overwhelms the operating system kernel, crashing the PC. Student, Joseph Ashwood, discovered the bug in the course of his research at the University of Southern California. He has posted detailed information about the bug and a potential cure at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~ashwood/ . Ashwood said he went public because Microsoft has made no attempt to create a patch for the problem. "I held off on creating a public spectacle of this flaw for several months in an effort to give Sun or Microsoft an opportunity to correct the issue," he explains in a statement on the site. Neither Sun nor Microsoft were available to comment, but Bloor Research analyst, Martin Brampton, said it is unlikely that Microsoft will come up with a patch. "The most complete solution is to stop using old operating systems like Windows 95 and 98," he explained, noting that Windows NT and Unix are not as vulnerable to the bug. "Windows is based on DOS, which isn't designed to handle multitasking. DOS was built to run one thing and nothing else." Brampton said surfers simply need to be careful which sites they visit. "It's not such a big problem. How many people haven't experienced a crash with Windows anyway?" he said.
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